Relatively Strange (30 page)

“Will you self-destruct, once you’ve given me the instructions?” I inquired, she ignored me, “Sam’s in the clinic on the second floor, you’re familiar with some areas from when you were there before, but you didn’t go into the clinic, right?” I nodded. “Glory will go through it with you, so you know exactly what’s where. All doors will be unlocked.”

“Surely they lock up at night?”

“Ed’ll deal with that.”

“Ah.” I subsided and glanced at Ed who was planted, massively immobile and expressionless on the sofa. I hated to be rude but it had to be said.

“Um, is Ed suited for undercover work? I mean he’s not exactly built to slip in and out of anywhere unobtrusively.” Miss P pursed her lips,

“He’ll be working from a distance.” She paused and added thoughtfully, “Unless it becomes necessary to go in. You just worry about your part, which is to make contact with Sam and get him out. Now there may be a small problem.”

“Just the one?”

“We can’t gauge Sam’s reaction, but he’s bound to be very frightened.”

“He won’t be the only one!”

“That’s why you’ll have Hamlet with you.”

“Hamlet?” Hamlet raised his massive head at my squeak, unsure whether he was being called. He waited, decided it was a false alarm and settled down again. Blimey O’Reilly, I thought, hadn’t the poor little sprat in the clinic gone through the mill enough, without waking up to find himself nose to nose with a bloody great beast – wasn’t there a fairy tale? Was it Hans Christian or the Brothers Grimm? A dog with eyes the size of saucers?

“Now you’re just rambling.” Miss P brought me sharply back and I gritted my teeth, I was, I felt, entitled to the odd private thought.

“Well, shield better.” She shot back.

“Now Rachael,” Ruth, moved in to avert an outbreak of hostilities, “She’s entitled to voice concerns.”

“Only if they’re valid.” Miss P was unequivocal, but she gave a slight nod in my direction which I took to be her version of a fulsome apology. “You just have to trust us, Hamlet will prove an asset.”

“But he’s so damn big, how do I get him to do what I want, he doesn’t really know me?” Miss Peacock looked at me over her glasses,

“Are you deliberately stupid? she inquired,

“Right, that’s it, enough already,” Ruth bounced up from her chair. “Rachael, you’re impossible when you’re in this sort of mood. Go. Put the kettle on or knit something useful. Glory and I will talk her through.”

“I need to …”

“Shush.” They glared at each other, identically shaped, obstinate jaws jutting, until Miss P the elder gave in and stalked off to the kitchen. Ruth swung diamond-patterned green tights back on to the foot-stool,

“Where were we? Ah, Hamlet. Now, how do you think you might get him to do what you want?” she raised a humorous eyebrow. I gawped, “Naturally.” she said “How else?”I was not happy about that. Over the years I’d listened once or twice to animals but didn’t like it at all – they were so, well, so animally.

“Nonsense.” Ruth had borrowed her sister’s voice and I felt like someone who’d flung themselves gratefully out of the frying pan into an even hotter predicament.

“Go ahead,” she ordered, “Try.”

Hamlet’s scent was hot, musty and doggy, a bit like a sweaty slipper. His mind was warm and full of smells, a world of odour, extending far out of the room we were in, each individual scent distinctive and meaningful. And hungry, Hamlet was hungry, although somehow I gathered Hamlet was almost always hungry, happy to eat at any time.

“Get him to do something.” Ruth instructed. “No, no, no, it’s no use giving it to him in words silly girl,
show
what you want,
show him
.” I was at a loss, did she want me to get down on all fours and trot to the other side of the room? I looked at her, her face was impassive. Glory was still and silent as only she could be and Ed, who of course, did expressionless better than anyone was no help either. I looked helplessly at Hamlet who’d woken up. This was ridiculous. I shut my eyes and concentrated. Delighted I’d finally made some sort of sensible contact, Hamlet hauled himself up and ambled over to where I’d sent him. I suggested he pick up a cushion and bring it to me, he did. I got him to sit, to stand, to lie down, to collect a shoe from Ruth and give it to Glory and he did all I asked, until I could feel his attention beginning to wane.

“Good girl.” Ruth was grinning, Glory was petting Hamlet’s head, he had his tongue lolling out and his eyes closed in pleasure – I felt much the same.

“Right.” Now Glory took over. “Shut your eyes. I’m going to walk you through the part of the building you’ve never been in before.” And she did, so thoroughly I felt I could find my way blindfolded, which I suppose was more or less what Glory usually did.

“When are we going in?” I had a horrible feeling I knew.

“Tonight.”

“But I haven’t heard the rest of what happened, after the thing with Peter.”

“Ah” said Glory,

“What does that mean – Ah?”

“We were hoping not to cover that till later.” I waited, eyebrows raised, I didn’t know whether she was looking through anybody’s eyes at me, but she got the message. She and Ruth exchanged a thought faster than I could catch,

“Go, phone home.” Ruth instructed “Then we’ll bring you as up to date as we can before it’s time to leave.”

I dialled my mother from the phone which lived on the sideboard between a bust of Queen Victoria looking bored and a photograph of Glory and the Peacock girls. Ruth and Glory had their arms round each other and were laughing, Miss P had hers crossed and from the look on her face was telling the photographer to get a move on, I couldn’t see her foot, but I guessed it would have been tapping. My mother was more than delighted to hear from me. She sounded strained, they’d been going back and forward to the hospital. No change though in Grandma’s condition. She was also, needless to say, worried sick about me. How was I? Was I getting the answers to questions? What was it exactly they wanted me to do? When was I coming back?

I said I was fine and thought it best not to mention my hostess had just pushed me out of a first floor window. I said yes, I was finding out a great deal of stuff I’d always wanted to know and didn’t add that the ghastly nightmares of the unfortunate Peter would disturb my sleep well into the future – certainly far more than they’d ever now disturb his. And as for proposed activities, well – I’d be going, under cover of darkness, to a Medical Research Centre run by a lunatic doctor. I’d be taking with me the biggest damn dog you’ve ever seen and I’d be breaking and entering with the intention of kidnapping a small boy, who, if push came to shove, could kill me with a single thought. I crossed my fingers and said nothing much was happening this evening and no I wasn’t sure yet how long I’d be staying, but I really was learning a lot.

I replaced the receiver carefully with a clear conscience and a lump in my throat. I’d given them too many worries through the years to add more now and what they didn’t know, couldn’t drive them round the bend. What I’d learned, over the last couple of days, had shown me the reality of how wonderfully well they’d coped all my life, evidenced by the fact I was never made to feel anything other than just a bit Strange. I reckoned I owed them the odd little white lie.

*

We sat down to supper and it was a measure of how I was feeling that I can honestly say I have no idea what we ate. Then we went to change into warmer clothes.

“Dark stuff.” Miss Peacock instructed. If, I couldn’t help thinking, breaking and entering was on the agenda, it would have been a nice hostessy gesture to have mentioned it in the original invitation so one could have packed accordingly. But I needn’t have worried, on my bed were soft trousers, a grey T-shirt, a thick black jumper and a long waterproof jacket.

When we re-congregated, Glory and Ruth were looking uncomfortably unlike themselves in items clearly allocated from the elder Peacock wardrobe. A long grey jumper swam on Glory’s thin frame, a dark brown one looked as if it was feeling the strain on Ruth’s. Glory had even left off the earrings.

“We still have a bit of time,” Miss Peacock decreed as Ed, pottering in the kitchen, sent us four mugs of milky coffee and, each taking over smoothly from the other where relevant, the three women began to weave the rest of the story.

Chapter Thirty-Four

After the unfortunate ‘Atkins incident’, as it came to be known, and as soon as Ruth and Rachael were able to reach Glory, they demanded she get out of there immediately. But it seemed, that for everyone, the stakes had changed.

Glory stated categorically she couldn’t possibly leave however much she might want to, her conscience simply wouldn’t let her. No amount of ranting and raving on the part of the Peacocks – mental, telephonic and, when they eventually got to see her, face to face across a small iron table covered with scones and jam in an Oxford tea-shoppe, would change her mind. You had to hand it to her, when it came to ranting and raving there can’t have been many to rival the Peacock sisters in full and double flow.

Things had changed too for the Doctor. Hard on the heels of Peter’s last stand, some Men from the Ministry had come hot-footing down from London. Glory, regaining consciousness only after a good forty-eight hours of Atkins-generated trauma, could vaguely remember them peering in at her in her room, ‘Like a flipping fish in a tank’, she said resentfully. Under the eagle eye of Mrs Millsop, she was being kept in for bed-rest and observation. One catatonic patient, Mrs Millsop paraphrased crisply, was sad, two could be considered careless.

Mrs Millsop, empowered by having snatched Glory from the jaws of Peter’s fate, had in fact, become a rather unexpectedly solid tower of strength. When the Doctor wanted to start immediate tests, to ascertain whether Glory’s ability had been affected, Mrs Millsop put her size nine, sensibly rubber-soled foot down firmly. For the next few days, she stated, any tests would have to be done over her dead body, and as this would have proved a substantial obstacle to even the most determined, the Doctor gave in petulantly and Glory was grateful for the breathing space.

It was never quite clear from precisely which Government Department the Foundation’s funding flowed, although it was almost certainly MI something-or-other. In any event, Glory said, there’d been three visitors and looking through various eyes she saw identical dark suits, ties and sombre expressions. They were shown round by the Doctor who was all over them like an oil slick. It seemed though that it was this visit which moved things suddenly onto a different level altogether. Whilst they’d had enough faith in Dreck’s research to fund the Foundation in the first place and had been willing to set in motion the costly and ponderous wheels needed to create the social study cover, it had been purely on a, ‘Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes’, sort of basis. Indeed, this was just one of a number of seemingly wacky projects they underwrote during those desperate, pull-one-over on the Communists years, when the atmosphere between East and West was frosty to freezing point.

However, quite a lot of testing sessions at the Foundation had been cine filmed and delivered to an anonymous office in Piccadilly, creating something of a stir. The film provided the Men from whichever Ministry, with irrefutable evidence of what did actually exist, if only they could get their hands on some of it. Running through their minds during their visit, as they looked at the wreck that was Peter and the slightly less wrecked Glory, were the unlimited uses to which such talents could be applied – espionage, international and industrial, warfare defensive and aggressive – the list was endless. They also knew the Americans were doing very similar testing across the Atlantic, were desperate to score first and at Newcombe, could suddenly see in the distance something that might be success.

They got very excited in a mutedly undercover sort of way, and exchanged a lot of expressionless looks, although each knew exactly what the others were thinking – as indeed did Glory. The Doctor, who’d spent a good many years fighting for recognition, determined to prove the worth of his project, suddenly found it proven. He was now, however, under intense pressure to deliver.