PopCo (18 page)

When my bus arrives back in the village it is usually almost dark and I walk across the green and through Hang Man’s Lane, down the alley leading to our garden and then in through the back door. My grandfather cooks stew most evenings, with root vegetables and prunes, and while it bubbles away on the stove, we sit down and he fills me in on the work he has done so far that day. I am not old enough to have homework yet, so we spend most of the evening working on the manuscript, except for when my grandmother comes downstairs, and we are expected to put our work away and fetch drinks for her. We also stop for dinner, and sometimes I watch my grandparents play chess or Risk together afterwards. Occasionally I am allowed to play too, but I never win. The only night our
routine is different is on a Tuesday, when my grandfather compiles the crossword for the local newspaper. On a Wednesday morning he cycles into town to deliver it to the newspaper offices. (He has decided that using the car all the time is too ‘lazy’.) He always buys toffee on his way back, and so on a Wednesday evening we eat toffee while we work, and I have to clean my teeth for twice as long on a Wednesday night.

One Wednesday afternoon, I am waiting at the bus stop thinking about toffee when these two men come up to me. I wouldn’t notice, except that, as they approach, I can hear one say to the other, ‘No, that’s definitely the Butler kid. Look at her hair.’ I consider running for it but that always looks suspicious so I stand my ground.

‘Hello,’ one of them says to me.

I say nothing back. Is this danger? Or are these people just friends of my grandfather? I remember that in our Stranger Danger sessions at school, we were told not to believe a grown-up if they say something like, ‘I’m a friend of your dad and he asked me to drive you home.’ So I am ready for this. I don’t have many self-defence moves but I will knee one of them in the balls if I have to.

The other one takes a step towards me and I instinctively move back.

‘Don’t scare her,’ says the other one. Then to me: ‘Don’t mind him. He’s got no manners. My name is Mike and my friend is called John. We’ve been trying to get in touch with your grandfather.’

Still, I don’t say anything.

‘We had his number a couple of years ago but we lost it. And we don’t know where he lives any more. We wondered if you could point us in the right direction? We’re old mates of his from the Fountain. We’ve got a proposition for him. So …?’

Now I know they are lying. My grandparents have only had a telephone in the house for about a year at the most. And it was my father who always drank in the Fountain, not my grandfather. Knowing this makes me frightened; my small heart an elastic-band ball, bouncing in my chest. These are definitely bad men. Do I run now?

‘I’m not allowed to talk to strangers,’ I say.

‘We’re not strangers. We’re friends of your…’

The one called John interrupts. ‘Oh leave it, Mike. They’re taught to ignore all this stuff now. You can’t ask kids the bloody time
these days. Let’s just leave it. This little bitch isn’t going to tell us anything.’

Tears spring into my eyes. No one has ever spoken to me like this before. My bus, welcoming, warm and full of nice grown-ups pulls up but something tells me not to get on it. If these men know my bus route, they’ll have a much greater chance of working out where I live, and I really, really never want to see these men again. So, although every part of me wants to get on the bus, I glance at it dismissively and then look at my watch, as if I am thinking,
Hmm, this isn’t my bus. Wonder what time my bus will be along?
The bus soon moves off and I am left alone with the two men again. I wait until the split-second when it seems right and then, seeing no alternative, I run for it. I run through the shopping arcade and out into the main part of town, not looking to see if they are running after me. In a few minutes I make it to the police station, and, after telling them that some strange men asked me to go with them to look at some puppies, they drive me home.

When the police have gone, I tell my grandparents everything.

‘Excellent,’ my grandfather says. ‘You did the right thing.’

My grandmother isn’t so pleased. ‘You should have got on the bus, Alice.’

‘But then they would have known …’

‘There are other ways of finding out where someone lives. You shouldn’t put yourself in danger.’

I can’t help it. I know I have been brave, but now I start to cry.

‘And lying to the police …’

‘That was quite right, Alice,’ my grandfather says, emphatically. He looks at my grandmother. ‘We
don’t
want other people knowing about this. Especially not the police. Imagine going to court and having to be completely public about all of this? It would cause mayhem. And it served those two right. If they get picked up for this then … Well, it’ll teach them to swear at a child.’

‘Maybe the police
should
know. What are these people going to do next? Kidnap Alice? Try to take the necklace? I don’t know why she even has the bloody necklace anyway, Peter. It’s like you’ve made her into your walking, living proof. You’ve branded her. It’s like Hardy’s postcard: utterly ridiculous. It’s not safe. And it’s not fair, either.’

I have never heard my grandparents argue before. I wish they would stop. This is all too confusing. What on earth is Hardy’s postcard? What’s wrong with me having the necklace? Although it’s the most exciting thing I own, I suddenly don’t want it any more. My grandmother gets up and pours herself a drink, which she almost never does, and fetches me a glass of water.

My grandfather is pacing the room now.

‘This is nothing like Hardy’s postcard. He didn’t have proof. I do.’

‘Well, why don’t you just publish it, then?’

‘Beth, we have talked about this. You understood.’

‘That was before strange men started abusing my granddaughter in the street.’

‘Look, can you stop making this more dramatic than it actually is? Yes, I admit that those men aren’t particularly nice but they would never, ever hurt a child. They want my address so that they can come and try to persuade me to tell them what I know. They, like every other bugger out there, think that one day someone is simply going to give them a treasure map and they’ll be able to just go off around the world and claim something that doesn’t belong to them. Well, I’m not having it. Even if they did come here, I could deal with them. What happened tonight was very frightening for Alice, I know, but it’s not as sinister as it seemed. Alice did the right thing, and I am very proud of her. Now, I am going to go out for a while to make sure this does not happen again. Give Alice some strong, sweet tea, please.’

The door slams and I am left alone with my grandmother. Although she is obviously cross, she makes me a cup of tea with several sugars in it, and strokes my hair for a while as I drink it. Then she distractedly makes herself another drink and looks at the clock on the mantelpiece. She sits down and sighs.

‘What is going on?’ I ask, simply.

She laughs nervously. ‘Where would I start?’

I put on my best grown-up voice and say: ‘At the beginning.’

At half-past four we walk down the hill to the Great Hall and clamber into the boat. I had expected it to feel solid but it is actually on some kind of spring system and wobbles when you walk on it. We learn what things to hold on to to avoid going overboard and Gavin explains that if we were on water we would have to wear lifejackets. On rough water, he says, we would be tied to the boat with a line. Gavin controls the ‘wind’ with these big fans and we have a go at putting sails up and taking them down again. We learn not to get in the way of the big boom when it gybes from one side to the other (being hit by it is, apparently, the number-one cause of going overboard) and not to get the sails tangled when putting them up. Gavin keeps explaining that this thing or that thing is much better on water, and easier to understand, which is odd considering that he has invented this indoor training boat. It’s quite thrilling when the boat heels over in the ‘wind’, though, and I feel quite excited imagining doing that in the water. In fact, the more I think about it, the more keen I am to actually get in some water: it’s turned into a very hot day.

There is a swimming-pool next to the Sports Hall complex, apparently, so after our sailing session is over I leave the others and walk back to my room and dig out some navy blue knickers that look like shorts and my bikini top, which I put on under my clothes. I grab a towel from the bathroom and start walking slowly across the grounds, thinking about cold water on my body. As I walk, I hear the Kid Lab noises again but they fade as I get nearer to the Sports Hall. When I get there, the sounds have completely gone. There are no children anywhere.

The small swimming-pool is entirely deserted, the water as flat as a mirror. It is not full of leaves and dead things as I had feared but is surprisingly clean and fresh-looking. Next to it are some gazebo-style changing rooms, which, it turns out, have cardboard boxes full of little plastic packages containing PopCo swimsuits and towels. The swimsuits are white, with PopCo written across the chest. I decide to stick to my own clothes. After stripping down, I drop my towel by the edge of the pool and dive straight in. That’s
better. Ice, ice, and then, gradually, body temperature. I swim a couple of lengths and feel almost normal again. My hair is getting wet, which is a bad thing, but I may just keep it plaited for the foreseeable future and then it won’t matter what happens to it. Two plaits, and a slick of Vaseline; that’ll do it. I don’t think it’s actually that normal to put Vaseline on your hair but I refuse to pay for all that brightly packaged funky-hair shit they sell in chemists. It’s all just grease, whatever they call it. It’s bad enough that I buy anti-frizz shampoo and conditioner.

I am sitting on the edge of the pool, dangling my feet in the water, when I realise someone is walking this way.
Ben
, I think, for a second. But it’s not. It’s Georges. What’s he doing here?

‘Alice,’ he says, coming over to where I am sitting.

‘Georges,’ I say back.

He’s wearing knee-length shorts and a thin linen shirt with some expensive-looking sports sandals. He slips these off and sits down next to me, dangling his feet in the water next to mine.

‘God, it’s a bit cold,’ he says.

‘You just have to get used to it,’ I say. ‘How are you?’

‘Me? Busy, stressed, you know how it is.’

I laugh. ‘I’m a creative. I never get stressed.’

He laughs too. ‘So …’

‘What?’

‘How are you finding all this? The project?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I say honestly. ‘Ask me again in a week.’

‘I hear that some of the lateral thinking hasn’t been up to much.’

‘It’s all right,’ I say. Then I frown. ‘Are we focus-grouping or something?’

‘What? Oh, no. Sorry. I did actually come looking for you, because …’

‘Because …?’ I turn to look at him, trying to erase what’s in my eyes before he sees it. There’s always been something about Georges; there always will be. I notice how skinny his brown legs look in his shorts and I can see him, suddenly, as he must have been as a child. But this man is the corporate face of all the creatives at PopCo. He is our boss. He is almost as remote as the moon. When he turns to kiss me, I allow myself to want him for five seconds, which I count in my head, as his lips meet mine, his hand resting lightly on my arm. But then I pull away and stand up.

‘In a parallel universe,’ I say, before I walk away. And then, perhaps not loud enough for him to hear me: ‘In dreams.’

My room feels cool and almost dusty after the heat outside. Somehow I manage to get inside and flop onto the bed before I realise that two envelopes have been pushed under the door. For a few more seconds I lie there with the pleasant chill of the duvet on my back, frozen in time,
incommunicado
. Then I get off the bed and pick them up.

One envelope has my name on the front. The other is blank. I open the one with my name first. It’s from Georges.
On my way
to find you to give you this
, it says.
If I don’t find you (or if I
screw it up) here it is anyway
. There is a business card, blank except for Georges’s name and his mobile phone number. I hold the thin card in my hand as the highlights of another life play in my head. I don’t know how this life ends, or even how it would begin.

The next envelope is exactly what I feared it would be. Another thin
With Compliments
slip, this time with the following letters on it: PFTACJVPRDNN? I sit down at my desk and start working it out, using only the POPCO lines of a Vigenère square, which I quickly draw up on a piece of paper. It’s cool in this room but yet I suddenly feel desperately hot. As I work on each letter of the text, I find myself hoping that the completed message will tell me something about who the sender is and what he or she wants. But this message turns out to be even weirder than the last one. It finally comes out as: areyouhappy?
Are you happy?
What? What does this mean? Why has someone sent this to me? It has definitely been sent by an amateur, I know that now. The use of the question mark has given them away. No one uses punctuation in cryptography; there really is no point. Rather than consider the contents of the note, I turn my attention to other factors: mode of sending, ink, handwriting and so on. The PopCo
With Compliments
slip is an innocuous enough piece of paper to use, I suppose. Everyone has piles of those things at work.
But we’re not at work
. Did someone bring compliments slips with them to Devon? Did he or she bring them specifically to use for this purpose? I haven’t seen any compliments slips since I have been here but then I didn’t know that there were swimming costumes provided for us, or chefs. I examine the
With
Compliments
slip again. Something about it is different from the
ones we usually have, not that I even see those very often. Of course. The address. The address on these slips is the address here, not the UK headquarters in London. Does this mean anything?

Whoever sent this must have delivered it by hand today. Quite obviously that means that it is someone who works here, someone on the project, or Mac or Georges. Georges was at PopCo Towers both times I have received one of these notes, but why would he bother to send me one message in code and another in plain text? And giving me his phone number is far more incriminating than sending a note simply asking whether I am happy. I don’t think it is likely to be him.

I roll a cigarette and, after lighting it, I use my lighter to burn the partial Vigenère square and the decipherment I have just completed. I know what it says and don’t need evidence of it lying around. I am not sure yet that I want my correspondent to know that I am easily deciphering these messages. In fact, I am not sure I want this correspondent to know that I care. More importantly, though, I particularly don’t want someone to find the deciphered message. This would compromise not only the message itself but also the key. However insignificant or absurd a message seems, you must never compromise the key.

You have to do things now, if you are going to do them at all. You really don’t know what is going to happen in five minutes’ time. If I don’t burn this stuff now, I may never get the chance again. Anything could happen. I could go back to the swimming-pool, bang my head and wake up three months later in hospital. ‘We cleared out your room, Alice. What were those weird bits of paper? Why were you decoding messages?’ Since I don’t know who is contacting me, I don’t know whether or not I want to be connected with them. Putting things off is one of the great comforts of our lives.
I’ll be home at the end of the day. My husband will come
back. There will be food in the supermarket. If I run out I will just
get some more
. But you never know. People threw food away before the siege of Leningrad because they didn’t know what the next day would bring, and a few months later they were boiling up handbags for soup. You never know if you will wake up one day to find your mother dead or your father gone or that war has broken out. You just don’t know.

Am I happy? I really don’t know.

I look down at the surface of the desk, at Georges’s card and the
With Compliments
slip. Then I burn them both, too.

*

‘If you want me to start at the beginning,’ my grandmother says, ‘this may take some time. We have to go back to the start of the Second World War, or even a bit before.’

‘The war?’ I say.

She nods and sips her drink. ‘You may have noticed that I seemed sad when we were discussing Bletchley Park recently. I was surprised that you didn’t ask whether or not your grandfather was there during the war …’

‘Was he?’ I ask, thrilled at the thought of this.

‘No. I was.’

‘
You
were?’

‘I was one of very few women cryptanalysts. I worked with Turing on the Naval Enigma. It was hard work but very exciting. Your grandfather and I were already lovers by the time war started, and we planned to marry. However, war puts so many plans on hold and there weren’t many weddings in those years, I can tell you. We had both studied at Cambridge. I was one of the first women to actually be allowed to take a proper degree, and I, like your grandfather, read mathematics there. Alan Turing was a Fellow at Cambridge when I was an undergraduate in the thirties. I remember that he was very passionate about the anti-war movement at first, before things became more muddled after about 1934 or so. Hitler was doing all kinds of things, whipping and murdering people in the streets of Vienna and so on, and we were hearing stories all the time but no one knew what to believe. Hardly anyone wanted a war. But then it was suddenly inevitable.

‘In the last two or three years before the actual declaration of war, I had graduated and started working towards a fellowship thesis but your grandfather was in a lot of trouble. He was a stubborn man even then, and was always on the wrong side of those in authority. He was passionately against war of any kind, and, one night not long before his graduation, he wrote a series of pacifist messages in chalk on some of the walls around the university. He was forced to own up eventually, and although it was chalk and
washed off perfectly, they wouldn’t give him his degree. They said they would do so only if he made a formal apology, but he refused. It had been a political statement, not a silly prank, he said, and then he simply left the university, vowing never to return. He stayed in Cambridge, however, and still socialised with a big group of us from the university but he always refused to apologise for what he did. It was a funny time. Turing had gone to Princeton, hoping to meet a mathematician called Gödel, but had met another Cambridge man, G. H. Hardy, instead.’

‘Is this the Hardy who sent the postcard?’ I ask.

‘Gosh, you’ve got a good memory. Yes, it is the same man.’

‘So what was his postcard?’

My grandmother laughs. ‘This is slightly off the subject but at least it will explain your grandfather’s comment earlier. Hardy was an eccentric mathematician, not unlike your grandfather in some ways. He was obsessed with cricket and proving the Riemann Hypothesis. And God. He was obsessed with a strange war he was determined to fight with God. He was always trying to trick God. He would turn up at cricket matches with a pile of work to do, pretending that he hoped it would rain so he could get some work done. He was actually double-bluffing God. He thought that God would see that he hoped for rain and give him sunshine instead – which was what he actually wanted all along. Hardy’s postcard was well known. He sent it to a friend just before he was about to get on a ship to sail on some very rough seas. The postcard said he had found a proof for the Riemann Hypothesis. By this time, the Riemann Hypothesis was one of the most famous unsolved problems in mathematics. Hardy knew God wouldn’t let him drown after he had sent this postcard. He would have become famous overnight if he had drowned, for ever known as the man who had solved the Riemann Hypothesis and then died. He just knew that God wasn’t about to make him immortal like that, thus his “insurance policy”. One very funny thing, actually, was when Paul Erdös met Hardy. Erdös is a completely eccentric mathematician as well. His name for God is the SF – the Supreme Fascist. You can imagine how the two of them got on! Anyway, that should explain Hardy’s postcard.’

‘I see,’ I say, although I’m not sure how this fits into the argument before.

My grandmother makes another, smaller drink for herself and puts on the kettle again, possibly for more tea for me. It has started to rain outside, tiny hooves on the window, and I hope my grandfather is all right. My grandmother does make me more hot sweet tea, and switches on the gas fire before sitting back down on the sofa.

‘Where were we? Oh yes. Turing had been working on the Riemann Hypothesis for some time, and meeting Hardy had made him wonder if in fact he should be working on disproving, rather than proving it. He returned to Cambridge in a strange mood, filled with even crazier-than-usual ideas about mind machines and real machines that he would build. He particularly wanted to create a machine to work on the Riemann Hypothesis, and I assisted him for a time at Cambridge. I remember my head was full of thoughts about my heroine, Ada Lovelace – Lord Byron’s daughter, another woman mathematician – and I was a little bit in love with Turing although that was silly because he was, at least at Cambridge, openly gay.’