The Insulators (5 page)

So she said in a quivering whisper what she wanted desperately to shout: “You can’t escape. They’d stop you like they stopped Paul.”

And in her mind’s eye she could see the six men, striking and striking and striking again.

“Janey,” Philip whispered, “you saw what happened to Paul.”

“Yes. That’s why you can’t—”

“That’s why I must escape,” he retorted. “This isn’t a simple industrial consortium; this is something ugly, deadly, cold-blooded. The outside world
must
be told.”

They were so close together and warm and snug. It was an age since she had lain like this, seeming as if in one way she had slipped back to the loveliest days of her marriage with Bruce. There was something else, a sense, an awareness, rather than knowledge. It was right to be here with Philip. No matter what had led up to it, no matter what his real purpose, they were one of another. It was as if she belonged to him, had suddenly become part of him. She was too tense in her mind and too relaxed in her body to think beyond that awareness, but one thing she did know.

She did not want him to leave her. The Project would be a dread and dreary place without him now. Yet as she allowed that thought to drift through her mind there was a companion thought, that this was absurd. How could she fall so desperately in love in a few hours?

His arm was firm and strong about her waist; he was holding her close and with the pressure of his body, comforting her and giving her reassurance.

“That’s why you can’t—” she had begun, the picture of that hideous attack on Paul vivid in her mind.

“That’s why I must escape,” he had interrupted.

Why had he said that? Why had he spoken as if she would understand?

Hazily, she
did
begin to understand.

“Janey,” he whispered, “this is like a concentration camp.”

She caught her breath: “No!”

He shifted his position slightly, making her aware of the lean strength of his body, the rippling power of the muscles in his stomach, in his legs. Now his cheek was against hers, his voice just reached her and she knew that he was trying desperately to make sure that no microphone picked up his words.

“It’s happened too often before in modern history. When a man’s nerve is broken, he disappears. If a man’s soul rebels, he disappears. Only if he does what he is told, only if he asks no questions and meekly accepts the life he’s allotted, can he live in peace and safety. That’s true here. You must be aware of that by now. You of all people can’t be blind.”

But she had been blind, because she had wanted only to live in her world of personal sorrow and of grief.

There had been disappearances; there had been others from different departments who had shown signs of the same nervous tension as Paul; and vanished. She was aware of another thing:
not another man or woman had talked of this to her.
She, like everyone else, simply accepted the situation; why else could it be, but because they were afraid?

The fear was in Arthur Leadbetter, in Freddie Ferris, and it had become naked in Paul Taylor. About them was a wall of silence. Despite the awful noise and the vibrations which never ceased, there was a conspiracy of silence. In all the time she had been here no one had talked about the conditions of their living, or anything except generalities, or music, the arts, the sciences. No word about working conditions, for instance, nor about the men who commanded them. Oh, in the common room there would be fast and furious arguments about politics and about foreign affairs, but these had long since lost their bite. It was as if they were living apart from the world.

A ‘concentration’ camp . . . ?

Philip whispered: “We can’t let it go on without trying to escape so as to tell the outside world what’s going on. Janey, everyone here is a slave.”

“Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t go on.”

“But you know it’s true,” he insisted.

“I don’t—I don’t want to think about it.”

“Don’t you?” he said in a queer voice. “Well, I haven’t thought about anything else for a long time. Except—” he broke off, and eased away from her so that although they were still close from the waist down, she could see his face as he could see hers. His hands moved and his strong fingers played so gently with her, there was a curve at his lips and she had not realised before how strong and handsome he was. “Except you,” he went on much more clearly, as if it no longer mattered whether he was heard. “Except you, Janey.
How I love you!”

She thought, exultantly: How I love you!

But almost at once doubts crowded into her mind. He would say that to reassure her, he might even say that he loved her because of what had happened between them, but his motive both for loving and for saying that he loved her could be the same: to win her help in a bid for escape, the very thought of which she hated.

He kissed her, gently, and began to speak softly again: “We mustn’t talk except in whispers.”

She could not stop herself from retorting: “When we’re in bed, you mean.”

“When we’re alone in the grounds, anywhere we think we’re safe from being bugged. Janey, please – you
must
know that I have to escape.”

One half of her mind already knew; the other half resented it bitterly and fought against it as if she were fighting death.

In the next few days she had long periods of bitter revolt, anger and resentment. When she was alone she thought, he
was
using her, cold-bloodedly, callously. But whenever they were together, in the restaurant or the theatre, holding hands in the cinema, dancing in the night club she had only been to occasionally before, she was quiveringly aware of him. And when he came to her at the day’s end, and on the odd days off when they did not work, she was aware only of being in love.

Ashley looked up from a report he was reading as he sat in an armchair in his suite, which he shared with Parsons. It was midday. Even here, insulated against sound as well as the building could be, the muffled roar came, and the air seemed to throb, the floor vibrated in a way which some got used to but which drove others out of their minds.

“Have you read this latest report on Wylie and Carr?” he asked.

Parsons, who was changing records on a record player, looked over his shoulder and remarked: “It seems very satisfactory.”

“It is,” Ashley said. “I have only one reservation.” As he said that his expression took on a sharp edge, giving him a predatory look.

“What’s that?” asked Parsons. The record dropped and he moved across to an armchair opposite Ashley. His face reflected none of the smaller man’s doubts, he looked completely self-assured as he lowered himself into his chair.

“It happened so quickly,” Ashley said.

“Don’t you mean it came to a head very quickly?” countered Parsons. “Carr must have been sexually aware of her for a long time.”

“I wish I knew why it came to a head that particular night,” said Ashley. He got up nervously, and went to a bookcase, selected a slim volume of verse,
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,
came back and sat down. But obviously he could not settle, and Parsons got out of his chair in turn, went to another corner of the room where a small cine projector stood with a stiff cover over it. He took off the cover, pressed a button on the wall, and two shelves began to revolve until a small, silvered screen appeared in place of the books.

He placed some spools on the projector, a very simple task. All over The Project, in rooms, in the recreation halls, outside, in the laboratories, automatic cameras took pictures on tape which could be cleaned off and used afresh or processed onto film, as these had been.

“Come and see the lovers again,” he said, indulgently. He pressed a switch and the projector whirred. Pictures of Janey and of Philip Carr appeared, sharp and clear and in startlingly natural colours. They were walking along the riverbank, then across the lawns, hand-in-hand. There were pictures of them kissing, embracing, of them dancing cheek-to-cheek, eating, sleeping. Occasionally Jane Wylie seemed pensive but most of the time she seemed light-hearted and gay, while Philip Carr seemed to be more content than he had ever been at The Project, as if he had won his victory and asked for nothing more.

In the laboratories they did their work with much less preoccupations than before; and whenever they passed close or were standing together, they touched hands or touched bodies. From time to time their voices faded into a whisper, but always in moments of intimacy or embrace.

The film came to an end with a swift sequence of them lying close, in bed. As Parsons switched the projector off, Ashley remarked: “I wish I knew what they whispered about.”

“Sweet nothings.” Parsons seemed completely convinced.

“I hope so,” Ashley said. “I certainly hope so. We’ll keep them under close surveillance for another week, until Taylor’s replacement has had a few more days to settle down.”

“We’re still being watched,” Philip whispered.

With a glint in her eyes, Janey retorted: “Perhaps we always will be.”

“You’d be condemned to half a life here, even with me.”

“If this is half a life,” Janey said, “I’ve never lived at all before!”

They laughed, spontaneously. Everything they did and said indicated that they were becoming happier and happier, and except in flash moods of fear as to what would happen if Philip tried to escape, Janey was thoroughly happy.

Paul Taylor’s replacement was an ‘older’ man, in his forties. Already mostly grey, he had a big bald spot, grizzled sideburns which were like mutton-chop whiskers, and he had a bushy moustache which had more of its original auburn colour than his hair. His pointed chin was clean-shaven and shiny. He was very broad but shorter than medium height, and he moved briskly although handicapped by some trouble in his left leg, which made him limp, and also made him turn towards the left with great care; either his hip joint moved more easily that way or he was in pain.

His name was Killinger – Eric Killinger. He spoke good English but with a foreign accent which it was hard to place. His specific job, as Paul’s had been, was to test and analyse the oven and the synthetic materials from which the crystals were made, before passing the crystals to Janey who in turn prepared the containers for the ovens.

Occasionally Janey glanced over at him expecting to see Paul, and was suddenly overcome by what had happened, feeling a sharp pang of remorse that she could be so content. Yet she
was.
Philip seemed just as happy, and except for those flash moods of remorse and the stabs of fear about Philip’s preparations for escape, she was untroubled. There were times when she asked herself whether she would be prepared to settle for this life for all time, and even though she always dismissed the thought, knowing that she would become homesick for the outside world, she was certainly prepared to live in this vacuum for a long, long time. Philip seemed to become more and more absorbed in their loving and their living. He still kept his own one room apartment but spent most of his time with her. The nightmare of the attack on Paul had receded so that even when the mental image came it did not hurt; guilt quite died away.

Every now and again the noise ceased and brief spells of silence came, but they no longer brought shock. One struck as they were leaving the laboratory just before six o’clock, a later working day than most, for Leadbetter had come in from an interview with Ashley and Parsons and some other VIP Ashley looked brighter than he had for a long time.

“We are getting nearer,” he said exultantly. “There were pieces of lead which did not melt in some of yesterday’s batches, Janey.”

Her heart leapt. “But that’s wonderful!”

“It is indeed. And the whole of the team is to be congratulated and rewarded. We are to get a bonus of ten per cent on our salary, and the week after next, we shall have a longer break than usual from work.”

Janey thought, a
holiday
? But no one asked whether they would be able to leave The Project area. There was excitement in all of them, particularly in Freddie Ferris, who had lost some of his nervousness during the past week.

They were going into the tunnel passage when the noise stopped and the walls and the floor went utterly still. Killinger raised his hands in alarm; it was his first experience of the ‘silence’. After missing a step, Philip tucked Janey’s arm beneath his, and quickened his pace.

“Come on! I want every minute I can have with you!” He pressed her arm tightly; and in her room before she cooked a simple dinner, his embrace seemed to have an additional touch of passion. But it wasn’t until afterwards that she suspected why.

“If we ever go out into the cold, cold, world, you’ll be worth a job as a chef any day. I’d forgotten that mushrooms tasted so scrumptious and that minute steaks really melted in the mouth.” And later: “Darling, I don’t believe you did make this apple pie!” Soon, he put the
Suite from Swan Lake
on the record player and stood over her as she sat in an armchair, content and a little overfed. “Sweetheart,” he said. “I’ve a report to make for the VIPs, and I ought to go and do it. I’ll be back by eleven. Will that be all right?”

“Of course,” she answered. “It will give me a chance to do some chores.” By ‘chores’ she meant some personal laundry and mending.

Instead of suspecting the truth, she was actually glad; work even in this tiny apartment did pile up.

She had to scurry to finish by ten-to-eleven, tidied up, and by a minute or two after eleven she was waiting. When another five minutes passed she was aware of their going, but not troubled.

After ten minutes, she wondered whether she ought to call Philip’s flat, but all the telephones here were electronically controlled and if she showed any anxiety then the VIPs would learn from one of the computers. She did not want to appear over anxious.

It was as that thought struck that fear followed, with a shattering blow. All contentment faded and she went cold. She began to shiver.
He wasn’t coming back.
This was the night he had chosen to escape.

Oh, God! What could happen to him?

Oh, dear God, how could he leave her without a word of warning? How could he be so cruel?

She stood close to the windows, looking out, imagining figures in the shadows, moving forward as they had on Paul Taylor, but it
was
imagination. No one was outside. It was a wet and windy night, perhaps that was why he had chosen it.