The Meddlers (20 page)

So what’s the answer? I can’t go on like this, and clearly unless I do something—something positive—I’m going to go on suffering the whole bloody situation. What’s the answer?

But she couldn’t think clearly beyond that point. She opened her eyes again and stared at the whiteness of Norma’s back, the words running in circles in her mind.

Norma cradled the phone with a clatter and turned back to her.

“Sorry about that. I should be grateful we weren’t interrupted before. This wretched phone never stops.”

Miriam slid off the couch and straightened her coat, keeping her head down. She didn’t want to look at Norma. “I must let you get on,” she said, keeping her voice light. “It’s been very nice seeing you again, and most interesting to talk. And thank you for the script.”

“Oh, yes, it’s here.” Norma held out the scribbled prescription, and Miriam let her eyes move swiftly up to her face as she took it. “But, look, don’t be furious with me, will you, for talking as I did? I told you, I’m fond of you, and I’ve thought for years I ought to say to you the sort of things I did this morning, but somehow it wasn’t ever possible. You’ve always worn a sort… a sort of carapace. I don’t know, you made it impossible for anyone, even me, to get near you. Well, I’ve said it, and I hope you won’t take it unkindly. It wasn’t meant that way. I truly think you need to face up to the fact that you’re as much a woman as anyone else, and that you need loving.”

“Oh, my dear Norma, start on that again, and we’ll be here arguing till doomsday! Let’s face it, you married women are incorrigible matchmakers. You want to convert everyone to your way of life,” Miriam said and laughed lightly, aware of the brittle falsity in her tone, but knowing herself unable to do anything about it. “I must go, really.”

“Well, we know the good of it, and—”

“And thanks again,” Miriam said quickly.

She moved to the door, and Norma followed her eagerly.

“You’ll keep in touch, now? Come and have dinner with us soon? Joe’d love to see you. He always said you had the best mind of any woman he’d ever met. Next week, perhaps? We could make a date now.”

“I, I’d love to, really, Norma, but I haven’t got my diary with me. I’ll phone you, yes. Soon. Really I will.”

She was out of the front door, poised on the cracked concrete steps, aching to get away and think, somewhere quiet and peaceful. And to get this prescription filled and get some sleep, some real uninterrupted sleep. “I’ll phone you,” she said again. “And thanks so much. I’m really grateful.”

Norma watched her as she walked quickly up the road toward the underground station at the far end, frowning slightly. Should she have let her have that script? Was it in fact as she had first thought, a case of depression? But if she
had
been taking hormones it could account for it.

The baby moved inside her with a sudden thump, and she put her hand on her belly and relaxed. Lovely feeling, that. Poor Miriam, she thought. Brilliant and so stupid.

On the evening George Briant was to dine with Sir Daniel Sefton, he used the Nurses’ Home way out. At first he had found it an almost intolerable situation, having to sneak in and out of his own hospital by devious routes. But after almost three weeks of it, he took an almost schoolboyish pleasure in evading the idiots; school-boyish because they really were such idiots, and no intelligent man, he thought, with a faint sense of shame, should gain pleasure from pitting his wits against such people.

He stood for a moment on the Nurses’ Home steps, pulling on his gloves and looking along the road toward the hospital’s main entrance. They were there, of course. The couple of newspapermen leaning against the railings of the public library opposite, the knot of people carrying banners and placards, the watchful policeman standing stolidly in front of the hospital’s double doors.

He narrowed his eyes against the deepening twilight, trying to read some of the placards; perhaps there might be a new one. But
they were the same old statements. “For God so loves the world that He forgives those who repent, but His wrath shall be visited upon the sinners”; “A little child suffers for us”; “Briant is the Antichrist.” A position of greater importance than most men are offered, he thought sardonically. And there was the skinny woman with her now rather tattered “Support the Association for Abolishing Cruelty to Children” and the ugly one with her “Care for sick children comes before creating super children” and the little bowler-hatted man with his “Science shatters. It’s people that matters.” Briant rather liked that one. What it lacked in grammar, he thought, it made up for in pith. The man might hold crazy notions in his head, but he at least knew how to put them across.

He thrust his hands deep into his overcoat pockets and turned away to walk briskly down the street toward the tube station. It was getting late, and with the rush hour still filling the trains, he might be held up. This was one of the occasions when he missed the car, but it couldn’t be helped. He had been forced to swallow with what grace he could the demands that Marjorie had made when the break came. And at the time he had been so angrily unhappy that he could not have argued with her anyway.

He still could not really understand why she had chosen that issue on which to finally put an end to their life together. Had it been because of his flat refusal to allow Ian to accept the job in that ghastly musical, or his insistence that Hilary be allowed to leave school and work with him for a year in the Unit before taking her A levels at a polytechnic, he would have understood. But it was because of his refusal to accept either the first American offer or any of the others that came after it.

Her inability to realize the impossibility of leaving the project, after the years of effort that had gone into setting it up, was extraordinary in George’s eyes. After eighteen years during which he had been utterly devoted to his work, and had shown never the least interest in making money for its own sake, why did she find it so odd that he should be consistent?

But she had completely blocked any of his attempts to have rational discussions of the situation, had just repeated drearily, “This is the end. And I’m not going to go out into the street with noth-
ing to show for eighteen years of hell. You can get out.” And he had had to go, had to agree to send her money regularly, to let her have the car, because she had made it very clear indeed that if he refused her terms, she would go to court and make sure the adoption proceedings were ruined. And torn between keeping his wife and son, or keeping the project, he had made the only possible choice.

But he missed her. As he pushed his way into a southbound train, keeping his head bent as usual, his face shaded by his hat in case someone recognized him, he was suddenly swept by a wave of urgent need for her, an intensely sensual memory of the warmth of her beside him in bed that was so vivid it was as though he were actually there, reaching out to touch her familiar scented body. And even as he felt desire wash over him, he realized why. The woman standing close beside him was wearing the perfume Marjorie always wore, a musky sexual smell that once he had disliked; it was extraordinary how the heaviness of it created a clamoring need for her.

At the risk of drawing unwanted attention to himself, he pushed farther into the train, thrusting people aside, to get away from the smell, to stand holding on to a swaying strap and stare unseeingly at the pipes and wires swooping past the black windows as the train bucketed on its way.

He would have to do something about this. It was happening too often. For the first week or so he hadn’t been aware of his need, but now he had to face it. He had never been a man with a great interest in sex, never thought of himself as a particularly—what was it? yes—virile man. But clearly he needed a woman more than he had suspected he could. At the age of forty-five he should surely be able to come to terms with his own body, but since he apparently was not as able as he might be, he would have to do something about it.

But one thing was sure. He would replace Marjorie with someone he liked and didn’t merely desire. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, loving a woman as he had loved Marjorie in spite of her shallowness, her stupid adoration of Ian, her rejection of Hilary.

Ian and Hilary. He had that much to be grateful for, anyway. To be relieved of Ian, with his nasty little mind, his puny show business ambitions, his slyness, his totally intolerable personality, yet still to have Hilary with her unquestioning acceptance of him as a scientist first and foremost, her razor sharp comprehension of the way his mind worked—that was indeed something to be grateful for. She didn’t seem to notice the discomfort of their life now, didn’t seem to mind in the least having so tiny a room at the top of the Unit, or having to cook their dull little meals in the dingy kitchen cluttered with laboratory equipment. She worked hard too, dealing with all the tedious little jobs in the Unit that would waste the time of the trained staff, yet expecting no payment, none of the fripperies most girls of her age seemed to care about. Hilary more than made up for everything else that had gone so wrong in his personal life. If the family had to split down the middle, at least it had split the right way.

Sir Daniel was waiting for him in the leathery sporting-printed bar of the restaurant and greeted him with a bland friendliness that went a little way toward allaying George’s suspicions. He had been very suspicious indeed when two days after that disastrous
Probe
program he had received the invitation written on expensive stationery bearing an Eaton Square address, even more suspicious at the way the man had written again and again and eventually managed to reach him on the telephone, making his determination very plain.

“I would prefer not to commit to paper at this stage my reasons for wanting so much to talk to you, nor to discuss them on the telephone,” Sir Daniel had said. “May I simply say that I have the welfare of your project deeply at heart, and can make what I am sure you will see as a most advantageous proposal? I do most earnestly advise you to agree to this meeting.”

And with both Hilary and Barbara Hervey reminding him that the
Echo
had consistently applauded the project, still ran frequent leaders castigating the government for its lack of support for science, he had given in.

“I took the liberty of ordering our meal in advance, Dr. Briant,” Sir Daniel said. “I know this place very well, and know which of
their offerings are best. A few native oysters, some of their truly excellent saddle of mutton, and a most interesting couple of wines. But if you would prefer something different?”

“Thank you, no. Whatever you suggest. I am not particularly interested in food.”

“My dear man, how could you be? I know all too well that such an interest can be… costly. And in your position, you could hardly indulge yourself in any way.”

“If you mean I have no money, you’re right. Is that your reason for this invitation? To feed one of the starving?”

“Oh, please, you mustn’t be offended! I merely wanted to make it clear from the outset that I am aware of what is your most pressing problem. Financing your exciting work. But we really must not get down to cases quite so abruptly. I suggest we eat and then relax and talk. An aperitif? No? Then we’ll go in.” And he crooked an imperious finger at the headwaiter and led the way to a table in the corner of the big main room.

They ate to the company of desultory conversation on general subjects, in part because the waiters were so attentive that it would not have been possible to do otherwise, but also because Sir Daniel made it quite clear that he had no intention of being hurried. Not that George minded. He was hungrier than he had thought and, despite his denial of interest in food, thoroughly enjoyed the excellence of what he was given.

But all through the meal he was aware of still holding a deep suspicion, particularly as he didn’t like his host, finding his smooth talk rather repellent, and some embarrassment in his arrogant way of dealing with the waiters. But he controlled his suspicion, tried to show a relaxation he didn’t feel as coffee cups were put before them and Sir Daniel leaned back in his chair to look consideringly at him.

“Well, now, Dr. Briant. Shall we settle to some practical talk? You want to know why I suggested this meeting?”

“I’m interested, yes.”

“You appreciate that my newspaper, the
Echo
, has from the start consistently supported you, in spite of an almost general outcry against you?”

“Oh! Am I supposed to appreciate it? I regarded the paper’s attitude as the only intelligent one. Or should I be appreciative because intelligent reporting is so rare?”

“I used the word in a different sense. I meant to make it clear that you had no need to fear my paper. Of course, I ask no appreciation, although I might perhaps point out that I had to overcome considerable editorial diffidence to ensure the
Echo
would take the line it did.” He smiled. “Newspaper proprietors have remarkably little power, you know. I for one am constantly bullied by my editors. But on this issue I felt so deeply that I made a stand. And I am happy to say that my senior editorial people have come round completely to my way of thinking. So much so that”—he paused— “so much so that I am here to make to you an offer that I am convinced will be of great attraction to you.”