CONDITION BLACK (29 page)

He drifted from the group. They didn't seem to notice his going. He forced himself. He penetrated a second group. Across the room he saw that Sara blushed, and that she giggled, and he saw the man's head close to her face, saw that he whispered to her.

He stood his ground in the second conversation. Noise growing all around him. The babble of the voices, and the heavy beat of the music from hidden speakers. The hostess, the one called Debbie, was at his elbow, more champagne. These were the chosen people around him. The ones who were never breathalysed. The ones who knew the back doubles in life. These weren't the people who would have themselves stopped, where everyone could see, at the Falcon Gate. These were the Thames Valley Triangle people. There was the sweep of lights through the window, thrown from another car in the drive. These were the new rich, and he couldn't think for the life of him what he was doing here . . . There was a ring at the front door. He saw the back of them. Sara's back and the man's back, going out into the hall. A man asked him if he knew that club in Barcelona where the girls stripped in feathers, feathers would you believe it? Bissett said, to general merriment, that he was willing to believe everything he was told of Spanish strippers. Could no longer see Sara, or the man.

He thought it must be the guest that Debbie Pink had been waiting for. A tall, younger man, in jeans and a faded denim shirt. He managed a surreptitious look at his watch, not even ten, Christ . . . " O h , Freddie, someone for you to meet . . ."

"Hello, I'm Frederick Bissett."

"This is Colin T u c k . "

The young man smiled. " I ' m usually called Colt," he said.

Bissett tried to grin, " Y o u want to be called Colt, you can be called Colt."

The introduction had eased him out of the conversation group, and Debbie had moved away, more glasses to find and fill.

Colt said quietly, "This sort of crowd makes me want to throw u p . "

About the best thing he could have said to inch his way to Frederick Bissett's affection.

It was Debbie's bedroom. He held the picture in front of her.

The picture was of herself, sitting in front of the fire, in the dining room downstairs. The drawing had been framed in a simple black border. He held it for her to see herself. He put the picture down on the arms of a chair, where it faced the bed. She could have walked away. She could have pushed him away.

Slowly, he began to unbutton the front of her blouse. He slipped the blouse from her shoulders and reached behind her to unfasten the brassiere. She could have walked out through the door, slammed it on him. He pulled the zip on her skirt, and the skirt fell. She kissed him. His hands on her hips, and pushing down on her pants, and her stepping out of them. Her tongue in his mouth. Sara pulled the shirt off him, she had his belt open, she drove down at the waist of his trousers. She crouched. She pulled off his trousers and threw his shoes aside and peeled at his socks and underpants. She stripped him. Still not a word was said.

He led her to the bed, Debbie's bed. There was the photograph of Debbie beside the bed on the small table. Beside her own bed, Sara's bed, was the photograph of Frederick with Adam and Frank. She looked away from the photograph of Debbie. She lay on the bed and she threw out her thighs and she lifted her knees.

" O h , you're there, are you? Must be fascinating work."

"It has its moments."

"Well, that's the best brains in the country."

"Some of them."

"Well, m y privilege . . . "

"Thank you."

The food was in the dining room, and there was a slow movement towards it. Colt had manoeuvred Bissett towards the corner of the room away from the dining room door.

"What I heard, people work in that place for peanuts, lifetime of sacrifice on the altar of science."

"Well . . . "

" I f true, it's scandalous."

"I wouldn't say that we're . . . "

" L o o k at this crowd . . . Does any one of them do anything that is remotely valuable? Yet the drive outside looks like this year's Motor Show. This country's got its values upside down."

"I wouldn't disagree."

Colt reached for a bottle. A splash for himself, a fill for Bissett.

The man didn't look like a successful drinker.

"All the rewards go to the tax dodgers, the system buckers, the free enterprise merchants. And the best brains in the country?

Ground into the dust."

"We're not paid well, it's true."

"Understatement of the year, Frederick. You're very loyal, but you're paid awful money. One wonders if it will ever get any better."

" I ' m afraid we've missed out. World's upside down and Frederick Bissett's on the bottom."

"It's like a trap, really, isn't it? And it's difficult to know how to break free."

Her back arched, her thigh muscles taut. Reaching for him, rising to him. Him deep in her.

Oh, the fucking goodness of it, of him. When was it last as fucking good? Was it ever as fucking good with Frederick fucking Bissett?

Grinding her slowly away, breaking her will to compete with him. He was marvellous. Taking her with him .Best ever. . . better than the Ceramics tutor, and that was forever ago. Don't match him. Let him do it all, because that's what he was telling her.

Kissing him, holding him, running her fingers on his back. She was falling, she was letting her legs slide from against his hips. She was his. Slow, so slow . . . Taking her as she had not been taken.

Slow, slow, till she'd scream. Oh, oh, fucking good . . . H e r head thrashing on the pillow, Debbie's pillow. Hearing her own voice.

Recognising Sara Bissett's voice. Little shouts, slight calls. She moaned. He came inside her, deep inside her. She cried out.

He rolled away. Bloody hell, and the light was still on, the door was still open, and she could hear the shouting and the laughter shimmer up the stairs, and the rattle of plates, and the thump of the music. Didn't care, didn't give a damn. She played patterns with her fingernail in the hair on his chest.

Her husband was downstairs with the voices and the food and the music, and she didn't give a damn.

They were still in the corner, left to themselves. To Colt, he was just a target. He felt no emotion towards the man, no pity and no contempt. The time was right. The timing was the gamble.

It was his alone to choose.

He said, "There is another way."

"I don't know it. God knows, I've looked elsewhere. Too high-powered, too specialised, that's the trap."

"Go abroad."

Bissett said, "It's against the rules."

" Y o u go abroad and you don't tell them you're going."

"That's . . . "

"That's looking after yourself, Frederick. You go abroad where your work is accorded the respect it deserves, and where it is
paid
what it deserves."

"What you mean . . . "

"I mean, where you are a top man, head of a department. I mean where you are paid a hundred grand a year, no tax."

"I beg your pardon . . ."

"A team working for you, superb working and living conditions."

"I really don't know . . . "

Colt said, " D r Bissett, you can leave here tonight, you can go to your security people, you can report this conversation. I'll be in shit, and you'll be a hero and poor. On the other hand, you can agree to meet some people, you can discuss a work offer, a meeting without strings. Which, Dr Bissett?"

He recognised the wife. She came across to them. She said nothing. A beautiful woman. She looked as though she had had one too many.

Colt wrote a telephone number on a sheet of a notepad from his shirt pocket. He looked into Bissett's face, he saw the trust brimming in his eyes. He handed the paper to Bissett.

Bissett said, "I think it's time we went home, Sara, don't you?"

12

He had had the same fierce throbbing ache - and the same sense of shame the morning after his "stag night", just him and the junior physics lecturer who had agreed, after having his arm twisted, to be his best Man. And, once before , when he graduated. Breakfast this morning was absolutely out ol the question.

Sara had followed him round the house when they were back inside. "Had he enjoyed himself? Just a little? It hadn't been too frightful, had it?'' He wasn't sure it hadn't, And she hadn't worn her nightdress when they went to bed and she had clung to his back, and all he had wanted was to keep the room from rocking.

He could hear the clatter of plates and mugs, and he could hear her shouting up the stairs for the boys t»» hurry themselves.

As he shaved, and then as he dressed, there were the moments of truth remembered from last night. He asked himself what had got into him that he had accepted the telephone number of the young man who called himself Colt. What in Christ's name had he done that for? Why? Well, obviously he'd drunk too much.

No . . . not just because he had drunk too much, and he was committed to nothing, absolutely nothing. Of course he wasn't committed to anything, it was a conversation at a party . . . That was utter rubbish, and a Senior Scientific Officer at A.W.E.

didn't have to have it spelled out to him.

He went downstairs. The boys were down already and in their school pullovers, and bubbling to their mother because Vicky had let them sit up and watch television till late. He loved those boys. Sara protested he must eat his toast, the boys hooted with laughter, and the pain of the noise drove him, almost at a run, out of the house.

The young man had been a very pleasant young man, and he'd talked good sense. No strings, no commitment, just a conversation.

The Ministry policeman on the gate, he'd know that bastard.

Same bastard. He produced his I/D card. The man said, "Once more into the breach, Dr Bissett?" and all the way to his office Bissett hunted in his aching head for a stinging, annihilating riposte, but all the best lines seemed inadequate for use on the policeman.

Carol was handing the day's internal post to Basil. Basil had his bulging briefcase on the floor beside his feet as he flicked through the brown re-usable envelopes. Basil wouldn't be stopped by any bastard of a Ministry policeman when he cycled to H area from Boundary Hall. The Clerical Assistants were shrugging out of their coats, squeezing lipstick onto their faces, filling the coffee machine . . . and there was the young man. The young man sat close to Carol's desk and he had a raincoat over his knees, and an attache case that he held close against his chest. The young man seemed to be mesmerised by Basil.

"Morning, Dr Bissett," Carol's singing greeting.

"Morning, Carol."

The young man's head didn't jerk. There was nothing obvious in his reaction. The young man's head tilted upwards. A good-looking young man, Bissett thought, didn't look as though he was from the Establishment, might be down from London, the tie was London. Carol was handing him his own mail. He sensed that the young man watched him. He dropped three of his four envelopes into Carol's bin. He headed down the corridor, for his office.

He heard Carol say, " T h e problem is, Mr Rutherford, that Mr Boll may not be coming straight in. His diary's locked in his room. If he's a meeting first thing then I don't know when he'll be here."

He was at the door of his office, reaching for his keys.

A quiet, pleasant voice, " I ' m not in a hurry. On the other hand, if that's coffee that I see being brewed . . . "

He could listen. If he listened and did not like what he heard then he could walk away. Frederick Bissett was his own master.

He could control what he had begun. Why should he not be able to control his destiny?

A little past eleven o'clock, he left his office. He felt quite calm. He locked the door behind him and he walked down the corridor. He paused by Carol's desk. He didn't have to speak to her. The young man was still sitting in the easy chair near to Carol's desk. The young man was watching him. He didn't have-to offer an explanation to Carol as to why he was leaving H3 in the middle of the morning.

"I'll be gone for a few minutes, Carol."

The young man looked to Bissett like a civil servant, perhaps from the Property Services Agency, perhaps from the Directorate of Defence Services, another of the creatures who came down from London, knowing nothing, to pry into the efficiency of the Establishment. The young man was watching him.

He would only be a few minutes because that was all that it would take for him to drive across to the main canteen area where the public telephones were.

The telephone shrilled below him. The woman shouted at her baby to be quiet, and he heard her answer the telephone.

She came up the stairs to him. She knocked and opened the door. She seemed to him broken by the poverty, anxiety, of her life. She looked at him with a sort of longing. Not how Fran looked at him. It was as if she knew that he was free, and she was not free. She told him that there was a man on the phone for him. He went down the stairs fast.

Bissett, poor bloody Bissett.

"Hello, Doctor Bissett, very good of you to call me. Inconvenient, not a bit . . . You would? That's excellent. Of course not, no, just a talk . . . That's grand."

Colt said where they should meet, when they should meet. He put the phone down. She might have thought that he was free, but what did she know? Free to go back to Baghdad, to the Haifa Street Housing Project, when he had
finished
and there he would die a little until the next time he was called to the Colonel's office.

And his future? That was a big word, too big for Colt. Too far away, anyway, to think about.

The woman was still trying to calm the baby's crying.

It was Frederick on the telephone. It was so rare for him to use an Establishment telephone that her first reaction was that it must be catastrophe . . . He told her that he would not be home until late, that he had a meeting, that they were working through the evening. He was always curt on the telephone. She didn't quiz him, and she wasn't sorry that she would be spared the effort of making conversation with her husband that evening.