The Bat that Flits (6 page)

As it happened, the slopes weren't worth anything. But it was sufficient that someone had taken them. And what made it all so maddening was that Mellon was working on something else at the time, and didn't miss them until quite late in the afternoon. We'd almost forgotten about the vanished visitor by then, and the doorkeeper couldn't even give a proper description of him. The only clue that he'd left behind him was his security pass. That was what brought me into it. Because on examination it turned out to be the one that I should have given in the first day I got there. The name K. W. Judson had been carefully typed
where mine had been, and there was some rather dainty forgery around the date-line.

In the result, neither I nor the doorkeeper came out of it at all well. He was told that he shouldn't ever have admitted me without that pass. And I got it straight—the Old Man was even quite vehement about it—that a man of my education, whatever that meant, ought to have known enough not to leave uncancelled security passes lying about.

He was right there, of course. And all that I could do was to keep my head hanging down in the shame position. But it was interesting, too. It showed that I hadn't been mistaken in thinking that somebody had gone through my luggage the first day I had got there.

It was round about this time—about six weeks after I had turned up in Bodmin—that I picked up a car cheap.

Considering that it was a 1926 model and that it was 1952 when I bought it, there was no reason why it should have been anything but cheap. But, in any case, it was just the kind of car that I have never been able to resist. Even if I hadn't needed it, I would still have had it. The appeal that it made was distinctly maniac. The bonnet was long enough for it to have two leather straps across it. The windscreens could be folded flat. The back-quarters were boat-shaped and finished off rather nicely in what looked like undertaker's mahogany. The exhaust pipe was curved upwards, ending in a wide flat flare like the business end of a vacuum cleaner. And the mudguards were minute crescents mounted direct on to the axle brackets.

The whole chassis was about sixteen feet long from the
back light to the headlamps—they didn't fix bumpers in those days—and there was no hood. Indeed, come to think of it, that side of things was extraordinarily incomplete. There was also no pass light, no reversing light, no spares (I found that out later), no heater, no radio, no traffic indicator, and no door—you simply had to scale up the side and clamber over. But at forty-five pounds it was mine. And I've never seen a larger speedometer on any car : it was as large as a soup plate and calibrated in red from the hundred mark upwards.

I'm very fond of country motoring. My idea of a good time when I'm all healthy and extrovert and the little black demon is hushed up inside me, is to do about two hundred and fifty miles or so through the best country that I can find, and do it as quickly as I can. I regard the countryside of England as second to none in the world. I'm so enthusiastic that I would willingly die for it—and probably shall do one day. And I couldn't tell you what lies two feet on the other side of any hedge I've ever driven past. Obsessional motoring is what my kind is called. And extraordinarily pleasant and invigorating, I've always found it.

I was just coming back from a quick breather and was on the last lap, trying to make the speedometer show red on the Bodmin flat, when I saw the red-gold girl in front of me. She was walking. That was my cue. I cut out and put the brakes on as hard as I could, even clinging on to the beer handle outside to see if that would do anything. And it did. In the result, I shot past at only about fifty-five, and a hundred yards or so up the road there I was, stationary and waiting for her.

“Can I give you a lift anywhere?” I asked.

The “anywhere” was put in just to make the whole thing sound as casual and informal as possible. But it was obvious
enough where she was bound for. The way she was pointing, she would have to have said “Exeter” or “Salisbury” if it hadn't been the Institute.

I'd pulled over on to the grass verge in anticipation of this moment, and my cigarette case was open before I had begun speaking. “Shall we smoke a cigarette before we go on?” I asked.

It didn't help me much, however.

“I don't smoke, thank you,” she said. “But why don't you have one?”

That wasn't quite the same thing. If only one person smokes there is the rather oriental flavour of a hashish addict holding up the caravan.

“Been walking far?” I asked her.

“Only just up to the Tor and back.”

“I love walking,” I lied to her. “I'm crazy about it.”

“Have you done much of it?”

I shook my head sadly.

“Too lonely,” I said. “No one to talk to.”

There was no response. So I tried again.

“How do you like it down here?” I asked.

She paused.

“I think the work's important, don't you?

“Terribly,” I said.

She was speaking like the lady member of a B.B.C. Forum by now, and there was the distinctive ring of the house captain and senior prefect in her voice as she was talking.

“There are plenty of other things that I'd rather be doing,” she went on; “but now isn't the time for them, that's all.”

“The very reason why I came here myself,” I told her. “Couldn't have put it better, if I'd tried.”

Out there in the wind my cigarette was smoking faster than I liked. I wanted this conversation to go on for a long time yet. So I kept up the flow of small-talk.

“I've been noticing you in the common room,” I said. “You don't say much while the others are talking, do you? Is that because they bore you?”

“Some of them do,” she said. “All Commies are very much the same.”

“Meaning Kimbell and his boy-friend.”

“And Dr. Mann,” she said quickly. “He's just as bad really. When he first arrived he was always trying to get me to sign Peace Petitions, and that sort of thing. He'll be on to you next.”

“He has been,” I said.

“Well, you be careful,” Hilda replied very seriously. “It's not for us to judge him, because he may be perfectly sincere. We can't expect to have the monopoly of good faith on our side. On the other hand, if we really believe in anything ourselves we've got to fight for it. And, if the Communists are wrong, any Peace Petitions that they get up are likely to be wrong, too.”

My cigarette was finished by now. And to tell the truth, I hadn't been enjoying myself. The whole conversation was just a bit more rarefied than I had expected, and I felt rather like a rock-climber who has got up all right but can't find his way down again. Another ten minutes or so, and I should be calling out for the oxygen pack.

So this time I tried another approach altogether. It was not startlingly original. But I had reason to be grateful to it because it had helped me out often enough in the past.

“Do you mind if I call you Hilda?” I asked.

The question seemed to surprise her. Genuinely did surprise her, I think.

“Why ever should I mind?” she asked. “We're all working together on the same job, aren't we?”

I didn't want to fall into the trap and begin answering questions the way our great doctor always did, so I said nothing. I just sat there looking at her. And, speaking as one who has put some serious research into the matter, I would say that she had the best cheek-bones and eyelashes that I have ever seen on a girl. They took me right back to my schooldays when I used to go to sleep thinking of Norma Shearer.

I knew that so long as I had her near me and could see her and speak to her there was one side of me that I needn't worry about. Sublimation is what the psychologists call the state. That is how I was feeling at that moment, and that is what makes it so damn silly that I should suddenly have turned to her, and said: “May I kiss you?”

I knew perfectly well as soon as I'd said it that I'd done the wrong thing. And I had the uncomfortable feeling that Hilda was going to do the right one. She did.

“Better not,” she told me quite nicely. “We've got to go on working alongside each other and I'm sure we want to avoid a lot of awkward complications. So perhaps we ought to be getting back, don't you think?”

It occurred to me afterwards that perhaps it hadn't really been so bad for her as I thought at the time. After all, a girl as good looking as Hilda must have been through the same routine several times before. And I don't believe that a woman is ever anything but secretly pleased by the fact that someone has wanted to kiss her. But, at any rate, I felt flat enough at the time.

“I'm sorry,” I replied. “I can't think what came over me.”

We drove back to the Institute in the best tradition of
English silence and, when we got there, I was so distant I said: “Allow me,” when I gave her my hand to help her out.

As it happened, young Mellon was just returning from somewhere at the time, and I noticed the respectful expression on his face when he saw the two of us together. I rather think that he must have made one or two tries himself in the same direction when he first arrived here.

And I didn't need anyone to tell me that he must have failed, too.

But, Even if Hilda had shown willing, there still wouldn't have been much time for fancy motoring. That was because young Mellon had been doing better than ever on de-sporulation. And someone else had been doing even better than young Mellon. That someone else was Gillett. And as the work proceeded he gradually emerged as senior midwife. Despite all indications to the contrary, there must have been something or other propping up that profile from behind. And the fact that Bodmin was able to confirm a new, streamlined birth process for
B. anthracis
was really Gillett's own personal triumph.

He was certainly the Institute's blue-eyed boy when the Old Man called us all together. And Gillett knew it. He was therefore careful to keep his profile turned towards us throughout. That may have been because he suspected that, full-face, the old hatchet stock came out a bit too strongly.

The Old Man weighed in straight away. He crossed over
to the safe, fiddled with his keys and finally produced a test-tube rack with the tubes all nicely stoppered down with cotton-wool and sealed off with metholin.

“This is what we might call our Exhibit A,” he said proudly. “So far as we know these are the only anthrax cultures grown with the aid of M-substance in the country. Their multiplication rate is something between five and six times above normal. They may be the only cultures of that kind in the world. We don't know. And it is no part of our duty to find out. We are merely scientific workers.”

The “merely” really meant that he could not think of any higher occupation for Man. And, with that, he put the rack down on the table in front of us, and then turned to face his audience again.

“And now I'm sure you'd all like Dr. Gillett to say a few words,” he remarked sweetly.

We all clapped politely. Then we sat back for Gillett to give us his electoral address. And I must say that he did it beautifully. Almost too beautifully. First he thanked the demure one for the part that she had played in it, and there would have been tears in our eyes if he had lingered for a moment longer on the theme of love-in-harness. Next he paid a tribute to Dr. Mann which was probably perfectly justified. He thanked Rogers, the ex-lab. boy, and brought in Bansted in the same breath. He mentioned Hilda, who murmured: “No, that's too much.” He even went out of his way to salute Kimbell and Swanton, which you could see upset them because they both loathed him. He referred to young Mellon. And he offered me a personal crumb of his admiration—for not having dropped something that he had once handed me, I think it was. Then he looked very carefully round the room, and said: “I don't think I've left out anyone, have I?”

He had. He had left out the great Dr. Smith, and the omission was obvious and deliberate. I felt rather inclined to admire him for it. Or at least I might have admired him if I had liked him better. But, at any rate, it didn't surprise me. All research workers above a certain level are a pretty jealous lot of queens. And just to make sure that he wasn't given time to correct himself in case the omission had been accidental. I started up the clapping.

That was the end of the prayer meeting. The Old Man put the test-tube rack back into the safe, locked it carefully and restored the key to his key-ring.

Dr. Mann simply sat there staring at the door of the safe long after the key had been put away again. He reminded me of a picture in the old nursery at home of a hungry schoolboy sitting outside the larder door.

Elevenses that morning were rather more lively than usual. I wished afterwards that I could have kept a recording of the whole conversation because there were one or two rather useful pointers left carelessly lying around amid the general litter. I was the first to arrive. And I had my own good reason for that. It was simply an attempt to get to my coffee while it was still in the black state. The Phoenician had a healthy country girl's prejudice against black coffee, and at eleven hundred hours precisely she used to go up and down the line with her milk jug like someone doing the honours in a dairy show. When I snatched my cup away from her I saw the expression in her eyes of brute nature stupefied: it was as though a favourite bull-calf had just told its mother that it had gone on to the water-waggon.

Then Dr. Mann came in. He did not look well. I had noticed that earlier. There was a sort of frozen waxiness to his complexion, and his eyes were staring. I think that he was already saying something when he came into the room. And if he was, he must have been talking to himself because there was certainly no one else there. As soon as he saw me he came over, and all that I got was the tail-end of something.