Devices and Desires (7 page)

“But one of you has to make a start, Amy. There has to be a beginning of trust. Whether it’s people or nations, we have to find the faith to open our hearts and hands and say, ‘Look, I’ve nothing. I’ve only my humanity. We inhabit the same planet. The world is full of pain but we needn’t add to it. There has to be an end of fear.’”

She had said obstinately: “I don’t see why he should chuck his weapons once he knows I’ve got nothing.”

“Why should he keep them? He’s got nothing to fear from you any more.”

“He’d keep them because he liked the feeling of having them and because he might like to use them some day. He’d like the power and he’d like knowing he had me where he wanted me. Honestly, Neil, you’re so naïve sometimes. That’s how people are.”

“But we can’t argue like that any more, Amy. We aren’t talking about knives and guns and machine guns. We’re talking about weapons neither of us could use without destroying ourselves and probably our whole planet. But it’s good of you to help with PANUP when you don’t sympathize.”

She had said: “PANUP’s different. And I sympathize all right. I just think that you’re wasting your time writing letters, making speeches, sending out all those pamphlets. It won’t do any good. You’ve got to fight people their way.”

“But it’s done good already. All over the world ordinary people are marching, demonstrating, making their voices heard, letting the people in power know that what they want is a peaceful world for themselves and their children. Ordinary people like you.”

And then she had almost shouted at him: “I’m not ordinary! Don’t you call me ordinary! If there are ordinary people, I’m not one of them.”

“I’m sorry, Amy. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Then don’t say it.”

The only cause they had in common was a refusal to eat meat. Soon after she arrived at the caravan he had said: “I’m vegetarian but I don’t expect you to be, or Timmy.” He had wondered as he spoke whether Timmy was old enough to eat meat. He had added: “You can buy a chop occasionally in Norwich if you feel like it.”

“What you have is all right by me. Animals don’t eat me, and I don’t eat them.”

“And Timmy?”

“Timmy has what I give him. He’s not fussy.”

Nor was he. Neil couldn’t imagine a more accommodating child nor, for most of the time, a more contented one. He had found the second-hand playpen advertised on a newsagent’s
board in Norwich and had brought it back on the top of the van. In it Timmy would crawl for hours or pull himself up and stand, precariously balancing, his napkin invariably falling about his knees. When thwarted, he would rage, shutting his eyes tight, opening his mouth and holding his breath before letting out a bellow of such terrifying power that Neil half-expected the whole of Lydsett to come running to see which of them was tormenting the child. Amy never smacked him but would jerk him onto her hip and dump him on her bed saying: “Bloody awful noise.”

“Shouldn’t you stay with him? Holding his breath like that, he could kill himself.”

“You daft? He won’t kill himself. They never do.”

And he knew now that he wanted her, wanted her when it was obvious that she didn’t want him and would never again risk rejection. On the second night at the caravan she had slid back the partition between his bed and hers and had walked quietly up to his bed and had stood gravely looking down at him. She had been completely naked. He had said: “Look, Amy, you don’t have to pay me.”

“I never pay for anything, at least not like that. But have it your own way.” After a pause she had said: “You gay or something?”

“No, it’s just that I don’t like casual affairs.”

“You mean you don’t like them, or you don’t think you ought to have them?”

“I suppose I mean that I don’t think I ought to have them.”

“You religious, then?”

“No, I’m not religious, not in the ordinary way. It’s just that I think sex is too important to be casual about. You see, if we slept together and I—if I disappointed you—we might quarrel and then you’d walk out. You’d feel that you had to. You’d leave, you and Timmy.”

“So what, I walk out.”

“I wouldn’t want you to do that, not because of anything I’d done.”

“Or hadn’t done. OK, I expect you’re right.” Another pause, and then she had added: “You’d mind, then, if I walked out?”

“Yes,” he said, “I’d mind.”

She had turned away. “I always do walk out in the end. No one has ever minded before.”

It was the only sexual advance she had ever made to him, and he knew it would be the last. Now they slept with Timmy’s cot wedged between the partition and his bed. Sometimes in the night, wakeful because the child had stirred, he would put out his hands and clasp the bars and long to shake this frail barrier that symbolized the unbridgeable gulf between them. She lay there, sleek and curved as a fish or a gull, so close that he could hear the rise and fall of her breath faintly echoing the suspiration of the sea. His body ached for her, and he would press his face into the lumpy pillow, groaning with the hopelessness of his need. What could she possibly see in him to make her want him, except, as on that one night, out of gratitude, pity, curiosity or boredom? He hated his body, the scrawny legs on which the kneecaps protruded like deformities, the small blinking eyes too closely set, the sparse beard which couldn’t disguise the weakness of the mouth and chin. Sometimes, too, he was tormented by jealousy. Without proof he had convinced himself that there was someone else. She would say that she wanted to walk alone on the headland. And he would watch her go with the certainty that she was meeting a lover. And when she returned he would imagine that he could see the glow of the skin, the satisfied smile of remembered happiness, could almost smell that she had been making love.

He had already heard from the university that his research grant wouldn’t be extended. The decision wasn’t surprising; he had been warned to expect it. He had been saving as much as possible from the grant in the hope of amassing a small sum which would tide him over until he could find a local job. It hardly mattered what. Anything that would pay enough to live and allow him to remain on the headland to carry on the campaign. In theory, he supposed he could organize PANUP from anywhere in the U.K., but he knew that it was irrevocably bound to Larksoken headland, to the caravan, to that concrete mass five miles to the north which had power, apparently, to dominate his will as it did his imagination. He had already put out feelers with local employers, but they hadn’t been too keen on employing a well-known agitator; even those who seemed sympathetic to the anti-nuclear cause didn’t actually have work on offer. Perhaps they feared that too many of his energies would be diverted to the campaign. And his small capital was draining away with the extra expense of Amy, Timmy and even the cats. And now there was the threat of this libel action, less of a threat than a certainty.

When, ten minutes later, he returned to the caravan, Amy, too, had given up working. She was lying on her bed looking up at the ceiling, Smudge and Whisky curled on her stomach.

Looking down at her, he said abruptly: “If the Robarts legal action goes ahead I’ll need money. We’re not going to be able to go on as we are. We’ve got to make plans.”

She sat up smartly and stared at him. The kittens, affronted, squealed their protest and fled.

“You mean we might have to leave here?”

The “we” would normally have lifted his heart; now he hardly noticed it.

“It’s possible.”

“But why? I mean, you aren’t going to find anything cheaper than the caravan. Try getting a single room for two pounds a week. We’re bloody lucky to have this place.”

“But there’s no work here, Amy. If I have huge damages to pay I’ll have to get a job. That means London.”

“What sort of a job?”

“Any sort. I’ve got my degree.”

“Well, I can’t see the sense of leaving here even if there isn’t any work. You can go to the DHSS. Draw the dole.”

“That isn’t going to pay damages.”

“Well, if you have to go maybe I’ll stay on. I can pay the rent here. After all, what’s the difference to the owner? He’ll get his two quid, whoever pays it.”

“You couldn’t live here alone.”

“Why not? I’ve lived in worse places.”

“On what? What would you do for money?”

“Well, with you gone I could go to the DHSS, couldn’t I? They could send their snoopers round and it wouldn’t matter. They wouldn’t be able to say I was having sex with you then, not if you weren’t here. Anyway, I’ve got a bit in my post-office account.”

The casual cruelty of the suggestion struck at his heart. He heard with heavy disgust the note of self-pity which he was unable to suppress. He said: “Is that what you really want, Amy, for me not to be here?”

“Don’t be daft, I was only teasing. Honestly, Neil, you should see yourself. Talk about misery. Anyway, it might not happen—the libel action, I mean.”

“It’s bound to happen unless she withdraws it. They’ve set a date for the hearing.”

“She might withdraw it, or else she might die. She might drown on one of those night swims she takes after the
headlines on the nine o’clock news, regular as clockwork, right up to December.”

“Who told you that? How do you know that she swims at night?”

“You did.”

“I can’t remember telling you.”

“Then someone else did, one of the regulars in the Local Hero, maybe. I mean, it’s no secret, is it?”

He said: “She won’t drown. She’s a strong swimmer. She wouldn’t take foolish risks. And I can’t wish her dead. You can’t preach love and practise hatred.”

“I can—wish her dead, I mean. Maybe the Whistler will get her. Or you might win the action and then she’ll have to pay you. That’d be a laugh.”

“That’s not very likely. I consulted a lawyer at the Citizen’s Advice Bureau when I was in Norwich last Friday. I could see he thought it was serious, that she did have a case. He said I ought to get myself a lawyer.”

“Well, get one.”

“How? Lawyers cost money.”

“Get legal aid. Put a note in the newsletter asking for contributions.”

“I can’t do that. It’s difficult enough keeping the newsletter going, what with the cost of paper and postage.”

Amy said, suddenly serious: “I’ll think of something. There’s still four weeks to go. Anything can happen in four weeks. Stop worrying. It’s going to be all right. Look, Neil, I promise you that libel action will never come to court.” And, illogically, he was, for the moment, reassured and comforted.

It was six o’clock, and at Larksoken Power Station the weekly interdepartmental meeting was drawing to a close. It had lasted thirty minutes longer than usual. Dr. Alex Mair took the view, which he could normally enforce by brisk chairmanship, that little original thought was contributed to a discussion after three hours of talking. But it had been a heavy agenda: the revised safety plan still in draft; the rationalization of the internal structure from the present seven departments to three, under Engineering, Production and Resources; the report of the District Survey Laboratory on their monitoring of the environment; the preliminary agenda for the local Liaison Committee. This annual jamboree was an unwieldy but useful public-relations exercise which needed careful preparation, including as it did representatives from the interested government departments, local authorities, police, fire and water authorities, the National Farmers’ Union and the County Landowners’ Association. Mair sometimes grudged the work and time it involved but he knew its importance.

The weekly meeting was held in his office at the conference table set in front of the south window. Darkness was falling and the huge pane of glass was a black rectangle in which he could see their faces reflected, like the gaunt, disembodied heads of night travellers in a lighted railway carriage. He suspected that some of his departmental heads, particularly Bill Morgan, the Works Office Engineer, and Stephen Mansell, the Maintenance Superintendent, would have preferred a more relaxed setting, in his private sitting room next door, the low, comfortable chairs, a few hours of chat with no set agenda, perhaps a drink together afterwards in a local pub. Well, that was one management style, but it wasn’t his.

Now he closed the stiff cover of his folder in which his PA had meticulously tagged all the papers and cross-references, and said dismissively: “Any other business?”

But he was not allowed to get away so easily. On his right, as usual, sat Miles Lessingham, the Operations Superintendent, whose reflection, staring back into the room, looked like a hydrocephalic death’s head. Glancing from the image to the face, Mair could see little difference. The stark overhead lights threw deep shadows under the deep-set eyes, and the sweat glistened on the wide, rather knobbly forehead with its swathe of fair, undisciplined hair. Now he stretched back in his chair and said: “This proposed job—rumoured job, I should say—I suppose we’re entitled to ask whether it has been formally offered to you yet? Or aren’t we?”

Mair said calmly: “The answer is that it hasn’t; the publicity was premature. The press got hold of it somehow, as they usually do, but there’s nothing official yet. One unfortunate result of our present habit of leaking any information of interest is that the people most concerned become the last to know. If and when it is official, you seven will be the first to be told.”

Lessingham said: “It will have serious implications here, Alex, if you do go. The contract already signed for the new PWR reactor; the internal reorganization, which is bound to create disruption; electricity privatization. It’s a bad time for a change at the top.”

Mair said: “Is there ever a good time? But until it happens, if it does happen, there’s little point in discussing it.”

John Standing, the Station Chemist, said: “But the internal reorganization will go ahead, presumably?”

“I hope so, considering the time and energy we’ve spent planning it. I should be surprised if a change at the top alters a necessary reorganization which is already under way.”

Lessingham asked: “Who will they appoint, a Director or a Station Manager?” The question was less innocent than it sounded.