Jock Braby did an agitated turn about his office, returned to his desk and snatched his jacket off the back of a chair. The snob in Beard made him want to take the civil servant aside to tell him that it was not done, not since the Bletchley era, or at least, since Beard’s own undergraduate days, to have a row of ballpoints in one’s jacket top pocket. But he only ever thought his advice, he never gave it.
In a state of muted excitement, Braby was dignified, stooping from a height towards his companions and speaking in a measured, husky tone, as though at a sword’s touch he had just straightened the knee from a royal cushion. ‘I’m going to talk to Aldous, then I’m going to take him with me to Design. We need proper drawings. They can sit down with him and get to work, and meanwhile, Mike, you and the other boys can do the maths, you know, Brecht’s Law and so on.’
‘Betz’s Law.’
‘Quite so.’ And he was gone.
When Beard was done with his rounds, he settled alone with a few chocolate biscuits on a plate and a mug of stewed coffee from an urn in the deserted common room, behind the canteen, for a long time the only comfortable place in the Centre, and let his thoughts return to the object of his obsession, fixing, with a near-pleasant heaviness in his limbs, on certain details he had lately neglected. But first he had to heave himself out of his chair and cross the room to turn off the murmuring television, forever tuned to a news channel. Bush v Gore, absorbing the precious attention of the disenfranchised majority of the world’s population. He settled down again and took a grip on his plate.
Patrice was by far the most beautiful of all his wives, or rather, she was in her angular fair-haired way, so it seemed to him now, the only beautiful wife he had ever had. The other four had missed beauty by millimetres – a nose too thin, a mouth too wide, a minimally defective or recessive chin or forehead – and they had appealed, these lesser wives, only from a particular perspective, or by an effort of will or imagination, or through self-deceiving desire. Certain details then, concerning Patrice. For example, the narrowness of her buttocks. A single large hand could span them. The creamy tautness of her skin between protruding points of pelvic bone. The startling polymorphism that had formed her fine, straw-blonde pubic hair. Would he ever see any of these treasures again? And now, unsensual as it was, he had to consider the bruise beneath her eye. She would not talk to him, and he might never know the truth. He could deal only in probabilities. Suppose his plan had worked, that the woman in his room, whose footfalls he had drummed with his palms on the stairs, had not enraged but endeared and bound Patrice to him, made her anxious at what she thought she was about to lose, prompted her to tell Tarpin that the affair was over, that she was returning to her husband – and provoked his fury. In that case, her blackened cheekbone signalled that she was almost his, Beard’s, again. Too much wish-fulfilment in that. What then?
Mechanically, he conveyed biscuits from plate to mouth. Perhaps the entire entanglement was going to take an improbable course. Most things were improbable. There were bruised and broken women who could not stay away from their violent men. Organisers of women’s refuges often lamented this quirk of human nature. If she was addicted to her fate there would be more blows to the face. His beautiful Patrice. Unbearable. Unthinkable. What then? She could be sickened as much by Michael’s sympathy as by Rodney’s violence, and want to be shot of them both. Or, he could go into his bedroom one night and discover her already there, waiting for him, naked on the marital bed, on her back as of old, legs parted, and he was going towards her, murmuring her name, and now he too was naked. It was going to be easy, and when he reached her side he cupped her left… But he was no longer alone, and he did not have to look up to know whose shape was in the doorway.
Without pouring himself a coffee – he allowed himself no stimulants and thought Beard should do the same – Aldous sat down beside the Chief and, skipping preliminaries, said, ‘I seriously urge you to read the piece on thin-film solar in next week’s Nature.’
Some of the blood supply that should have been in Beard’s brain was still in his penis, though draining quickly, otherwise he might have had the presence of mind to tell Aldous to go away.
Instead, he said, ‘Braby’s looking for you.’
‘That’s what I heard. You’ve all seen my turbine drawing.’
‘He’s probably in his office now.’
In a show of professional exhaustion, Aldous removed his baseball cap, leaned back in the armchair and closed his eyes. ‘I should have destroyed it.’
‘It has some promise,’ Beard said, much against his will. He distrusted anyone off a baseball field in a baseball cap, whichever way round it was worn.
‘That’s the point. Actually, it’s revolutionary. Talk about smooth torque! Optimal angle of attack for any direction of wind flow. Turbulence problem solved! Don’t get me wrong, Professor Beard, it’s brilliant. But d’you know, if the Centre takes it up, that’ll be three wasted years of development, doing work that a commercial firm could be doing with a view to making money. And it’s not important enough, micro wind is not going to solve the problem, Professor. The wind doesn’t blow hard enough in most towns. We need a new energy source for the whole of civilisation. There really isn’t much time. We should be doing the basics on solar, before the Germans and Japanese run away with it, before the Americans wake up. I’ve got some ideas. Even with our crappy climate, there’s infrared. But why am I telling this to you, of all people? We need to take another look at photosynthesis, see what we can learn. I’ve got some great ideas there too. I’m putting together a file for you. And now I’ve just seen Mr Braby heading towards Design with my stupid drawing in his hand. Oh Christ!’
He clamped a hand over his closed eyes in another show – this time, of undeserved suffering stoically endured.
‘I’m a simple man, Professor Beard. I just want to do what’s right by the planet.’
‘I see,’ Beard said, suddenly unable to face the final biscuit as it appeared in his grasp. He put it back on the plate and with some effort pushed himself out of his chair. ‘I need to be getting back now. You’ll need to drive me to the station.’
‘No point,’ Aldous said, and was out of his chair and crossing the room in three strides to the TV set, where he changed stations and paused, waiting for one item to give way to another, then turned up the volume. It was as if he had conjured the story for his own purposes, driven an elderly couple to destitution and despair and persuaded them to throw themselves hand in hand in front of the London to Oxford train. The local news report showed nothing more gory than the lines of frustrated passengers at Reading station being turned away and others waiting for special coaches that had failed to turn up.
The young man was guiding Beard towards the door, as one might a mental patient in need of a bath. ‘I live not far from Belsize Park and I’m going home now. It’s not a Prius, but it’ll get you to your door.’
He did not know how Aldous knew where he lived, but there was no point asking. And because Beard now intended to go home, back to the headquarters of his misery, he had no interest in sending Aldous to see Jock Braby.
Within minutes the Chief was sitting in the front of a rusty Ford Escort, pretending to listen to an insider’s account of what he might expect to find in next year’s International Panel on Climate Change report. Now the driver’s line of gaze had to deviate a whole ninety degrees from the road to engage with his passenger, sometimes for seconds on end, during which time, by Beard’s calculation, they had travelled several hundred metres. You don’t have to look at me to talk to me, he wanted to say, as he watched the traffic ahead, trying to predict the moment when he might seize the wheel. But even Beard found it difficult to criticise a man who was giving him a lift, his host in effect. Rather die or spend a life as a morose quadriplegic than be impolite.