Red Joan (24 page)

Joan lifts her cheek to his. ‘Come to my cabin.'

Max looks at her. ‘Really? Are you sure?'

She nods.

‘I don't want to cause any . . . ' He hesitates, searching for an appropriately vague expression. ‘I don't want to cause any bother.'

She grins up at him and laces her fingers into his, suddenly bold. ‘I think I might rather enjoy a bit of bothering from you.'

M
ax is right. There are no bears in Quebec and it is scorchingly, blindingly hot. The city is light and still, with colourful pyramids of fruit stacked up in grocers' windows. A scent of freshly baked bread and pollen hangs over the streets. Was it ever like this in England before the war? Joan does not remember. She does not think she has ever seen such colour in all her life.

They are put up in an elegant hotel by the waterfront, and are joined for dinner on the first night by Taylor Scott, the new head of the atomic energy plant at Chalk River. He used to be assistant director of the theoretical research section at the University of Montreal, but has now been promoted to lead the new plant and will be more involved in experimentation than previously. It crosses Joan's mind that Taylor Scott might know Leo from his time at the university, and is immediately irritated that she has allowed herself to think of him.

Taylor Scott is a tall, thin man, with wire spectacles and a deep Canadian accent. He is dressed in a brown jacket and grey flannels, both of which are in need of pressing. They look borrowed, as if they are meant for someone bulkier. In that respect, he is much like many of the other scientists to whom Joan has grown accustomed at the laboratory, only his voice is louder and his shirt whiter.

‘They've just got in one of those new spin-washer machines at the plant,' he announces, undoing his cuffs and rolling up his bright white sleeves. ‘It's incredible.'

Joan imagines he is saying this for her, based on the supposition that all women are bound to be interested in laundry. ‘Oh?'

‘Incredible things,' he continues. ‘The physics of them is quite remarkable.' He shakes his head. ‘Quite remarkable.'

Joan glances at Max and raises her eyebrows, but Max's face remains expressionless. This is how he has been ever since their arrival in Canada, polite but cautious. Apart from his earlier whispered warning that Taylor Scott is well known for being a terrible bore but a brilliant physicist, there have been few other moments of normal communication between them and the presence of this slow-talking Canadian has only made him more reserved. Indeed, there have been moments since they arrived in Quebec when she wonders if it really happened, if Max really came back to the cabin with her and took off her clothes, piece by piece, unbuttoning her dress and lifting her slip over her head, and then sliding his fingers under the line of her stockings so that they could be carefully rolled down and lifted from her feet in a shimmering web of silk. She remembers the colour of his skin under his clothes, oyster-shell pink, and not at all like Leo's dark, tanned body, how he kissed her neck and then slept all night with his arm (which was heavier than you'd think) draped across her hip-bone, how they awoke in the morning with a start, both of them jumping in the air at the shock of finding the other next to them, and then giggling like children. She does not remember ever having laughed like that with Leo. She suspects that Max would be easy to love in a way that Leo never was, but then she catches the thought and crumples it up, berating herself for having allowed it to arise at all.

They eat fish and drink strong gin and tonics while Taylor lists the reasons why the Montreal laboratory at the university has not been as successful as it might have been. ‘The bloody Yanks just won't share,' Taylor says in a heated whisper. ‘They've got it into their heads that we want Russia in on the project.'

‘There is an argument for that,' Max says absently, his main focus being the huge white plate of food in front of him. ‘It will only make them more paranoid if we keep it as a secret.'

Taylor looks at him, and a shadow of a frown passes across his face. ‘I wouldn't let the others hear you say that.'

Max looks up. ‘What? No, of course not. I just meant that we won't be at war for ever. There are longer term implications . . . ' He tails off, turning his attention back to the dish of sole Veronique cooked in an exquisite buttery sauce of prewar richness.

‘The Americans are looking for any excuse to shut us down. They were even talking about cancelling the Canadian project at one point. We have three hundred guys working like crazy on the theoretical side, but we can't try it out because they won't send us enough materials. It's impossible to build a reactor on that kind of budget.'

Max leans across to Joan while Taylor continues to talk and places his hand on her arm. ‘Do you have the agenda for the trip?' he asks, and Joan nods, reaching into her bag to extract a sheaf of papers. He takes them from her and scribbles on the top sheet while Taylor is speaking. Taylor isn't saying anything of any interest, nothing they don't already know, but Max seems to be paying an inordinate amount of attention. He looks up from his notes only occasionally, frowning at some aspect of internal politics or other that Taylor has just mentioned, or to take a mouthful of food. After their plates have been cleared away Taylor excuses himself, and for a moment Joan and Max are left alone. Max does not look at her but instead pushes a piece of paper across the table in her direction. It is the agenda, but it has been so thoroughly scribbled upon that it is no longer readable.

‘Am I right?' he asks.

Bode's Law
, he has scrawled on the paper, and then a diagram of the sun, Mercury, Pluto, and then a circle with arrows dissecting each other at right angles, below which there is a series of numbers.
Centrifugal force of mass (m) rotating at angular speed (w) at distance (x) from the centre: m + w2. So if the speed is v, then w = v/x, hence the centrifugal force is . . .
There is a complicated sum written out at the bottom.

She frowns. It seems to make sense to her but she is not quite sure. ‘What is it?'

He grins. ‘It's a spin-washer.'

There is a pause. And then she bursts into laughter.

 

The next morning they are driven twelve hours north-west up the Ottawa River to the new Chalk River plant in the depths of Ontario. The car journey is hot and sticky, and they stop on the hilly outskirts of Montreal for lunch, beef sandwiches with melted cheese, which Joan regrets as soon as she has finished for the greasy, sickly feeling left in her stomach. From this height it is impossible to see a single person down in the criss-cross of the city, but Joan feels suddenly and terrifyingly visible, as if Leo needs only to glance up in order to see her, an ant under a magnifying glass. She turns away and walks back to the car to wait for the others to finish, sitting in Max's vacant seat and leaning her head against his jacket. She closes her eyes and waits. No, she will not think of him.

The Chalk River atomic research plant is set within an area of pristine greenness, surrounded by pines and aspens and fir-covered hills which house a piercing chorus of cicadas. The ground is hot underfoot even though it is evening by the time they arrive, and the full glare of the sun has tipped below the horizon. They are shown to their respective bungalows, small log cabins painted in army green and set out along muddy, duckboard paths above which electricity wires cluster, indicating a hasty, haphazard set-up. There are several larger buildings made of corrugated iron in which the machinery is housed, and there is only one brick house, an old school building from before the war, shared between the administrative and theoretical divisions of the plant, and in which Taylor Scott's wife and children have taken up residence on the top floor.

The days at Chalk River are full, mainly consisting of eighteen-hour shifts with no let-up until Sundays. Joan and Max will be staying here for three weeks, but during that time they are obliged to become fully acquainted with every aspect of the plant. Max is to work closely with Alan Kierl, a quiet, colourless physicist who is in charge of developing samples of uranium 235 and another artificial fissionable isotope, uranium 233, while Joan is to assist with the smaller tasks: copying, filing, taking notes.

In the evenings, a large communal meal is served in Taylor Scott's house, everyone filing into a huge room which was once the school dining hall. There is a long wooden table running down the centre of the room, and the conversation is mainly to do with science and chess. Even after the wine has been poured, there is no let-up in seriousness. Tonight, Joan is sitting beside Max, who is questioning Kierl on whether he thinks the 233 isotope is likely to be suitable. Kierl's answers are, as ever, short and precise, not expansive enough to be classed as conversational. Max has complained about this before, frustrated with his slow progress in getting what he needs from Kierl, who does not offer information so much as have it extracted from him.

After the soup starter has been cleared away, Kierl excuses himself, saying that he needs to retrieve his notes in order to answer one of Max's questions, and Max turns to Joan with an exaggerated sigh. ‘He's exhausting,' Max whispers. ‘I don't know why he won't just talk normally. He only responds if I ask him a direct question, but then occasionally he inundates me. That's why he's gone off to get his notes.'

Joan grins. ‘He's like one of those slot machines.'

‘In what sense?'

‘You pay a penny to get any sort of movement, and occasionally you get a windfall.'

Max looks at her for a moment and then starts to laugh, which sets Joan off, and soon they are both giggling just as they did on the boat, coughing and snorting and trying to pretend they're not laughing, even though it wasn't a particularly funny observation. Certainly not this funny. Taylor Scott frowns at them, and Max manages to resume his serious expression once Kierl has returned with the file, but Joan can see his eyes glistening.

She sits back, trying to suppress the sudden surge of guilt mingled with attraction which she feels whenever she is with him. She cannot seem to push the thought of him out of her head, the memory of her fingers reaching out to unbutton his shirt, slowly, slowly, and then tugging at the knot of his tie (the same one he is wearing now) and pulling it off over his head. Her body burns to think of it. But at the same time she also feels guilty, because he is married (even if it is unhappily), and she should not have encouraged him, whatever Sonya might have said. It had just seemed so natural. So inevitable.

On previous evenings, the men have stayed behind after dinner to smoke and drink whisky upstairs in Taylor Scott's drawing room, and Joan has walked back along the duckboards to her bungalow alone, but tonight Max refuses a cigar and declares that he needs to sleep. Instead, he leaves with Joan and they walk together, both of them slightly dizzy with wine. She gets the sense that he has left early in order to be with her.

This is dangerous, she thinks. She glances up at Max. He is frowning, quiet, and she knows he feels it too. It is starting now. Something irreparable is starting now.

‘Joan,' he says, and then stops. He is holding his breath.

‘Yes?'

‘I want to tell you something.'

Joan turns to look at him. Her whole body is tingling. She waits for him to speak, but he doesn't say anything and quite suddenly she realises that he is not going to say what she thought he would. He is going to tell her it was all a mistake, that things have to go back to the way they were. ‘It's okay,' she whispers, her voice painful in her throat. ‘You don't have to say anything. It was my fault.' She tries to breathe more slowly. ‘I'm sorry. I promise I won't tell anyone what happened.'

‘No,' he says quickly. ‘That's not it.'

‘What then?'

‘I want to tell you . . . ' He stops. ‘I love you.'

The declaration is so unexpected that at first Joan thinks he cannot mean it. Is he teasing her? She hits him lightly on the chest. ‘Don't be silly,' she says.

‘I'm not being silly. I've loved you ever since you said you wished your name was Margery. I remember the exact second.'

‘That is silly,' she says, laughing and lifting her hand to his chest. ‘Although it was the crosswords that did it for me.'

She moves towards him and kisses him on the lips. She waits. She kisses him again. Bold, yet light. She stands in front of him and waits for him to kiss her back, only he does not. Something isn't quite right. His hands remain by his sides and he appears sad and resigned.

She steps away from him, suddenly hot with embarrassment. ‘I'm sorry. I thought you meant you wanted . . . oh God.' She turns towards her bungalow and starts to walk, half marching, half trotting, her eyes suddenly smarting at her own foolishness. She hears him start to jog after her but she does not stop to allow him to catch up. How did she misinterpret him so enormously? But didn't he say he loved her? She doesn't understand and she doesn't want to. She wants simply to be inside her small hut with the door closed so that she can't make any more blunders like this. Why didn't he stop her when he saw she was going to kiss him? Why did he just let her carry on like that?

Gently, he catches her hand and swings her round to look at him. ‘You weren't listening properly,' he says. ‘I love you. I can't stop thinking about you. It's been like this for weeks now. I want to be with you all the time. I want to . . . ' he raises his hands in a gesture of despair and for a moment it seems that he is going to say something outlandishly romantic, ‘ . . .
talk
to you. For ever.'

Joan smiles, although she still does not quite follow his logic.

His look now is desperate. ‘That's why I don't want to have an affair with you. Not like this. Do you see? I love you.'