The Yellow Glass (27 page)

“Will you pull through?
 
Anything I can get you from the medicine
chest?”
 

He was leaning against the
steel wall, flexing his arms and legs, when he suddenly clocked the presence of
Dilys Arkonnen.
 
His dark eyes widened
and little wonder.

“She’s been put out of
action, Tamang.
 
Drugged up to her
eyeballs.
 
Pretend she’s not here.”

He began to breathe again
and slid down the wall to sit on the floor.

“I think my head’s
bleeding,” he said.
 
“And my legs are
rather sore.”

“Other than that you’re in
tip top shape?”

He managed to squeeze out a
smile.

“Mr Upshott, I have
remembered now what it’s like in the field . .”

“And you can’t wait to get
back to the lab?”
 
I finished his
sentence off for him.

“Exactly so,” he said.

“Good.
 
I’m glad one of us has come to his
senses.
 
Now, I’ve got to scoot off
again, but make yourself a cup of tea, or whatever, while I’m gone; only mind
you grab the kettle before it starts whistling, won’t you?
 
I won’t be two ticks.”
 
I headed back up the ladder; I was beginning
to feel like I’d climbed the rigging to the crow’s nest on a fleet of tall
ships, I’d climbed up and down so many ladders in the previous hours.
 
“Oh, and one thing more.”

“Yes, Mr Upshott?”

“You’ve got to take your
clothes off again.
 
Yes, off with the
trousers, I’m afraid.
 
Now
, if you’d be so kind.
 
Trousers, duffle and shoes will do.
 
If you’ll just get a move on, I’ll take them
with me.”

 
To cut a long spy
story short, I nipped back to the stern, dressed Joe in Tamang’s clothes,
grabbed the radiation suits and, somehow, slogged back up the ladder with Joe
and the suits slung over my back.
 
I
dragged the lot over to the bows, where I slid the hatch and flung the suits
into the hold.
 
Then I retrieved Joe and
got him over to the mainmast, lashed him securely, made sure to keep him gagged
and rested his chin on his chest.
 
I
pulled the hood of the duffle coat up around his closely shaved neck, to hide
the pallor of his skin but, all in all, his dark brown hair and youth gave a
similar impression to Jay Tamang.
 
Then I
crawled back down the hatch and drank two cups of tea, extremely fast, with a
big bowl of pink blancmange to follow.

Tamang had treated the cut
on his head and the bruising on his legs with antiseptic and then hopped into
the spare suit, but he still seemed uneasy, largely because he seemed to have developed
an antipathy to the cat.
 
He sat,
cross-legged, on the floor, clutching a mug of tea and staring at the creature,
which lay curled up on top of Magnus’ chest, staring back.

“Don’t keep looking at him,”
I advised.
 
“He’s lapping up the
attention; any minute now, he’ll come and jump on your head.”

“Aargh!”
 
The cat seemed to have got to him more than
anything else.

I went over and picked the
cat up by his front legs and he hung, placidly, in my arms - his back paws
almost grazing the ground - like a sack of particularly heavy potatoes.

“He’s a peaceful old fellow,
look.”
 
I set the cat on my head and he
stayed there, quite happily, purring.
 
“Does he suit me?”

Tamang stared, gravely, at
the cat on my head.

“Why is it so big?
 
I don’t think it natural for a feline to be
so big.”

I put the cat back down on
the floor and watched him wander over to the fridge.

“Well, he’s the full tom, if
you get my meaning.
 
And a hungry tom, at
that.”

I dug out his chicken livers
from the fridge, watched him gobble them up in two seconds flat and then washed
up the bowl with the other dishes we’d used.

“Time to get some kip, I
think.
 
I’d better get that ruddy suit
back on.”

“What about the man?”
 
Tamang motioned upwards.
 
“Won’t he come down here?”

“Oh yes.
 
By my estimation, he should be joining us any
minute now to make sandwiches, but I don’t think he’ll be too fussed if he
finds Joe Bloggs having some kip on the top bunk.
 
I rather think Joe pulls rank, actually.”

“Joe Bloggs?”

“Mmm.
 
Young chap in a radiation suit escorting a
select cargo to Reg Arkonnen in Dover.
 
But only one of us can be Joe, you understand.
 
The other has to be small enough to top and
tail with the sleeping journalist, keeping his head well under the blankets.”

Tamang gave a resigned sigh,
grabbed himself an apple from the fruit bowl and got into bed with the
Left.
 
The cat promptly tried to dash in
with him.

“Oh, no, you don’t!”
 

I grabbed the animal and
took him up to the top bunk with me.
 
It
had been a long enough night for Jay Tamang, already and that seemed the very
least I could do.

 
I was woken by the
sound of murmuring voices down below.

“Rosa,” murmured Magnus
Arkonnen.
 
“Rosa Stone.”

“Yes,” went Tamang, “that
was
the girl.
 
But we have had no notification that she is
dead and I’m sure Mr Upshott would have mentioned it, if that were the case.”

“Yeah?
 
I wouldn’t put it past him not to; he’s a
cold-blooded bastard, that one.”

I hung my head down over the
edge of the top bunk.

“Good morning, Magnus.
 
Slept well?”

He stared, glumly, up at me.

“I’ve a cracking
headache.
 
Any more dope and I’ll OD.”

I climbed down and
considered Dilys Arkonnen.

“Auntie’s still out, I see.”

I glanced at my watch and
discovered that it was six thirty in the morning.

“I wonder how long she’ll
be?
 
You might want to put your hood on
just in case, Tamang.
 
Oh, and get out of
bed.
 
Finding any more men in her
nephew’s bed might tip her over the edge.”

“I reckon she’s well over
the edge by now,” Magnus pointed out.
 
“So,
what’s the plan, man?”

I put the kettle on the
stove and began to assemble some thick wodges of bread, margarine and jam for
the assembled parties.

“I’m afraid there’s not an
awful lot that can be done with you, Magnus.
 
You’re pretty much surplus to requirements until your injuries
mend.
 
I hope you can understand that.”

For once, he didn’t argue.
 
Although, he looked severely down in the
mouth.

“One thing I
will
say, however.
 
You can stop worrying about my niece; I spoke
on the phone with her, a couple of evenings back and she was alive and well and
staying with her family in Kent.
 
Going
on about Richard Burton, actually.”

“Hey, man!
 
That sounds like Rosa!”
 

His entire face transformed
before my eyes.
 
Lit up and all the rest
of it.
 
The boy was one
hell
of a sorry case.

“Yes, it does.
 
She’s keeping an eye on proceedings that end
- she tipped us off about the Kent angle - but she’s got strict instructions
not to interfere any further.”

“You’ll be lucky!”

I finished making breakfast,
passed the plates round and went to find my hood.

“I think she’s learnt her
lesson,” I said and, I have to say, it sounded thoroughly unconvincing, even to
my own ears.

“Right,” there were a couple
of points that needed clearing up.
 
“I’m
heading up on deck, so just a few words, you two.”

They looked alert and ready
for action.

“Magnus, you will be
departing with your aunt for the holiday home.
 
Can’t be helped, I’m afraid.
 
But,
I’d be grateful if you’d use your journalist’s skills and commit anything unusual
you might come across to memory; even the smallest thing could help the
Operation.
 
This is the telephone number
of the Stone family and I’ll check back with them from time to time.
 
Got it?”

I told him the number and
got him to repeat it back to me several times.
 
I was pleased to see that he accepted his fate with unusual grace,
considering that he was Magnus Arkonnen.

“Tamang, I want
you
to remain down here, with your hood
over your face, for the time being.
 
But,
the minute that Dilys Arkonnen begins to stir, get yourself up the ladder and
over to the hold in the back of the barge and let me know.
 
You will be passing the wheelhouse, so try to
walk tall and mumble politely if Mr Severs says anything because, obviously,
you will be being Joe Bloggs.”

He nodded, as bright-eyed
and bushy-tailed as if the day before had never happened.

“Good luck everyone,” I gave
them my old army salute.

Then I shuffled up the
ladder for the last time, feeling optimistic that we had all the bases covered.

 
“See you in Dover.”

 
They took samples of
every bodily fluid I owned, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with me.

“Are you sure you don’t have
kidney pain?”
 
One doctor asked.

“How are your eyes?”
 
Asked another, holding up four fingers.
 
“How many?”

I was tempted to say five,
but I stopped myself.

“We’ll take a good look at
them, anyhow,” he promised, and they did, holding up charts of rapidly
diminishing letters for me to read.

“J. K. Q,” I got down to the
itsy-bitsy ones at the very bottom.

“Q?”
 
He queried.
 
“I don’t think that’s a Q.”
 
He
peered at it.
 
“No, you’re right, Miss
Stone.
 
It
is
a Q.
 
Well done; not many
get that far.”

I felt absurdly pleased
because I could have memorised all of the charts from my last visit to Charing
Cross, but I hadn’t.
 
Honestly.

I’d been in hospital for two
days when a nurse asked me, casually, whilst filling up my jug of water:

“Any hay fever in your
family?”

“Oh, yes,” I replied,
sitting up in bed.
 
“My father’s riddled
with it.
 
He grew up in the London fogs
and he didn’t know he had it until we went to live in Kent and all of the
wildflowers attacked him en-masse.
 
But
I’ve never suffered from it.”

“No?
 
It can start at any time.
 
But I expect the doctors have ruled it
out.
 
Like me to find you a magazine?
 
Home Chat’s got some lovely knitting patterns
in it this month.”

“Thank you, that would be
wonderful,” I said.

But I wasn’t really thinking
about knitting patterns.
 
No, I was
thinking about speedwell, buttercup and stinging nettle.
 
About chalk milkwort, vetch, heartsease and
oxeye daisy.
 
And then, further back, to
the verdant spaces of the riverside at Putney and the daffodils in Hurlingham
Park.
 
Was it possible that I was
suffering from nothing more than the onset of a particularly chesty form of hay
fever?

I spent a lot of time
thinking - having little else to do in my solitary confinement - and the idea
grew on me.
 
And, then, other ideas began
to germinate and I thought
them
through, one by one, while I stared, unseeing, at the hospital ceiling.
 
I thought about my involvement in Uncle
Tristram’s operation, about him wanting me to be his eyes and ears, and it
occurred to me that I’d gone much further and that what I’d actually become was
a canary.
 
Only, instead of carrying me
down mineshafts to test the presence of poisonous gases, I’d been exposed to yellow
glass.
 
Again and again, I’d been exposed
to glass that was ostensibly pumped full of dangerous amounts of uranium, but I
hadn’t keeled over in my cage.
 
My
kidneys were still functioning and my eyes were still clear.
 
There was only one, logical, conclusion; I
had proved beyond any reasonable doubt - by my continuing, healthy existence -
that the deadly glass was a fabrication of a different kind.
 
It was, in fact, a story.

I thought back to my
research with the Encyclopaedia Britannica and I wondered why anybody had ever
thought it possible that glass
could
hold vast amounts of uranium?
 
The whole
idea was completely ridiculous!
 
Yes,
uranium glass certainly existed and had enough uranium oxide in it to fluoresce
under ultraviolet light; I’d seen that for myself in Reg Arkonnen’s shed.
 
But
massive
amounts of uranium that could be exported to Russia?
 
I hardly thought so.
 
And, if
I
hardly thought so, then why on earth had HQ fallen for it?
 
If this
was
a story, then it was the persistent variety they called a shaggy dog story.
 
I was only too conscious that I’d sworn to
have no more to do with Uncle Tristram’s work, but who could resist a shaggy
dog?
 
Certainly not me.
 
At which point, my father poked his head
around the hospital door and broke my chain of thought.

“Surprise!”
 
He boomed.
 
“The powers that be have allowed visitors.
 
How are you, bubeleh?”

“Hello Daddy.
 
How lovely to see you.
 
I’m perfectly fine, actually.”

He came in, parked himself
on the edge of my bed and dumped a brown paper bag on my bedside table.

“You didn’t bring grapes,
did you?”

“What do you take me
for!”
 
He gave me a look of mock horror
and a dramatic arm gesture that was straight off the boards of the Yiddish
theatre.
 
“Chocolate buns, Rosa.
 
But I shall take them away if you are too ill
to eat them.”

“Just you try!”
 
I grabbed the bag and hugged it to my breast.

“This I like to see.
 
You
do
seem well.
 
Have they drained the poison
out of you?”

“Poison!”
 
I scoffed.
 
“It’s pure poppycock.
 
I don’t
believe there ever was any poison in the first place.”

He looked confused and took
his horrible, black beret off to scratch his head.

“No poison?
 
How can that be?
 
Everybody
says
there was poison.”

“Yes, they do and that’s the
problem, actually . . . Tell me, Daddy, how is your hay fever?”

“Not so good, now you ask,”
he began to mop his eyes with his beret, as if my question had brought on an
attack.
 
“It’s started unusually early
this year, but Doctor Knowles says they’ve developed a new medicine that might
help.
 
Anti-hiss-something or other
[43]
.
 
I forget.
 
The old brain is slowing down.”

“So, what’s new?”

He laughed and put his beret
back on:

“Are you sure you’re not
well enough to come home?”
 
And then,
“Sam misses you.”

This was such an outrageous
lie that I wondered what could be behind it.
 
(Until I remembered how awful the atmosphere had been at home since
Uncle Albert had died, what with his sisters missing him so much and me feeling
so racked with guilt that I could barely speak.)
 
Perhaps they needed me at home.

“I shall discharge myself first
thing tomorrow morning and get the Dover train,” I said, “whether
they
want me to or not.”

“Oh.
 
I didn’t mean . .”

“I know you didn’t,
Daddy.
 
But I’m fine, honestly; as well
as I’ve ever been.
 
It looks like I’ve
inherited your hay fever, actually, so I’ll get Dr Knowles to give me some
anti-hiss-something, too.”

“Really?
 
Is that the doctors’ diagnosis?”

“Mmm,” I said, feeling
virtuous because I could have lied and given him an outright ‘yes’, but I
hadn’t.
 
“Tell Mummy not to worry and I
love her and I’ll see her tomorrow.”

“Well.
 
If you are sure.
 
I must get back to work now; I have a meeting
in London with a very important customer.”
 
He got up, kissed me and went to go.
 
“Oh, by the way, there is a little something for you in the bag with the
buns.
 
I thought it might help to pass
the time . . .”

I watched the door shut
behind him and lay back on my pillows, feeling rather surprised at myself.
 
I’d had the chance to run - to do a bunk, as
they called it in my family - and I hadn’t taken it.
 
Instead I was going back home to do my
duty.
 
Wonders would never cease!
 
I felt I deserved a chocolate bun, so I
stuffed one into my mouth, quickly followed by another one and then another,
and then I took a look at the book he’d brought me.

It was a miniature Collins
GEM, ‘Plants of the British Isles: Sea & Shore’, and I was very pleased to
have it.
 
I set about memorising the
entire contents ready for the next time I saw my father, because he was bound
to test me on them.
 

Of course, I already knew
quite a bit about sea-campions and thrifts and other wildflowers that grew by
the shore, but I was actually fairly ignorant about seaweeds, so I set about
filling this gap in my knowledge.
 
Hours
passed while I immersed myself in wracks and kelps, dulses and ulvas and I
thrilled to the wonderful common names of many species:
 
from Dead Man’s Bootlaces, to Landlady’s Wig,
Brown Tuning Fork Weed to Sea Whistle and Sugar Kelp.
 
There was even one called False Eyelash
Weed!
 
I imagined generations of people
finding these bizarre weeds, slimy of texture and alien of shape, washed up on
their beaches and attempting to make sense of them by giving them names that
related to commonplaces in their own lives; attempting to tame them with
language.

The tea lady interrupted me,
eventually.

“Anybody at home?”

“Come in,” I called and she
wheeled her urn through the door.

“They’ve taken the notice
off of your door, I see, dear.
 
Looks
like you’ve got nothing worth catching.
 
Fancy a cuppa?”

“I’d love one, thank you.”

She was just pouring me a
cup of tea when the policeman walked in.
 

“Miss Stone?
 
Miss Rosa Stone?”

The terrible, sinking
feeling reappeared; the feeling that had only just begun to go.
 
I had to make a conscious effort not to let
it drag me down.

“That’s me.
 
Can I help you?”

“Sergeant Riley,” he
said.
 
“I’m from Scotland Yard.”

He showed me his badge, but
once you’ve had dealings with the police you recognise them forever more,
whether in or out of uniform.
 
There was
something about the voice and the set of the shoulders.
 
And the feet, of course.
 
I couldn’t see this one’s feet, but the voice
and the shoulders were all present and correct.
 
He was quite young and brown-haired and wearing a brown cord jacket over
a brown v-necked jumper over a white shirt and a brown knitted tie.
 
Despite being a symphony in brown, he looked
quite presentable, actually, and my hands went to my hair, which was in even
more of a sorry tangle than usual.
 
I
could have done with a little warning.
 

“Hello Sergeant Riley.
 
Would you like a cup of tea while the urn’s
here?”

He shook his head and pulled
up a chair, rather close to the bed.
 
I
felt a touch flustered and adjusted my pale pink bedjacket, wishing it hadn’t
been pink because I looked an absolute lemon in pink, whatever the shade.

“We just need a few more
details, Miss Stone.”

“Righto,” I said, as
brightly as I could muster.

“I’d like to take you back
to the moment you looked in the shed, is that alright?”

It very much was
not
alright, but I took a big swig of my
tea, nearly burning the roof off my mouth in the process, and began.

“Well, I looked in the shed
and, at first, I saw nothing . . but once the uranium glass began to glow . .”

“To glow?”
 

He looked up from his
notepad and wrinkled his nose, in a sceptical fashion; I’d had a bit of trouble
with the police and this part of the story before.
 
Being policemen, they tended to distrust
anything that was new to them and fluorescing glass had certainly been off
their radar.

“Yes.
 
The uranium oxide used to tint the glass
reacted to the ultraviolet light inherent in twilight; it’s a perfectly normal
phenomenon and I can lend you my Encyclopaedia Britannica if you’d like to
confirm it.”

“Thanks, but I can go to the
library,” he muttered, head well down while he wrote out the above sentence in
longhand.

“You need to learn
shorthand,” I suggested.

He looked up from his pad
and into my eyes, briefly.
 
His eyes were
a rather lovely limpid hazel.
 
I think I
may have tugged at my bedjacket a bit more.