The Meddlers (31 page)

“Please, hear me out. You’re a reasonable man, with a… a logical mind. Hear me out. And if what I have to… well, suggest, seems unacceptable to you, I promise you I’ll
never
mention it again. I promise. But just hear me out.”

He looked at her, his face dark with a blend of angry unhappiness and furious impatience. “All right.” And his voice was rough and icy. “All right. I’ll hear you. But after this there is to be no more mention of any personal matters whatsoever.”

She nodded and then clenched her hands and thrust them
deeply into the pockets of her white coat in an effort to still their shaking. But she couldn’t stop the way her neck trembled, making her head move absurdly, as though she were a mandarin doll.

“You clearly have no further need for any emotional life. I accept that. But that you have a… a physical need for sexual relief can’t be denied. It showed last night. As a reasonable man, you must accept that.”

He nodded briefly. “I have already said the blame was mine. My own stupidity.”

“Not stupidity. Physiology. You can’t blame yourself for being a man any more than you can blame yourself for being a scientist. And as a man, you have needs that you’ve got to meet somehow. Well, I have needs too, and I want them satisfied. For a long time now I’ve known I wanted to satisfy them with you—no, I’m not talking about love. I promised I wouldn’t,” she said as he opened his mouth to interrupt. “I’m being practical. Plain practical. While you were… you were living with your wife, I had to tolerate the way I was, and somehow live with the need. I’m practical, you know, and I couldn’t see any way of… of getting what I wanted without causing a great deal of trouble. Well, the trouble’s happened anyway, but now you say it’s over. You’ve washed your hands of any further emotional involvement of any sort. I now want to make it clear that I am prepared to go on being… well, available to you, for any physical needs you have. This isn’t sentiment. It’s intelligent acceptance of a situation. I’ll get what I need, you’ll get what you need, and emotional matters won’t come into it. It will be as simple a matter as telling me to collate a day’s readings or organize a set of tests. That’s all. Practical.”

There was a short silence. Then he said in the same flat tone he had first used, “Is that all you want to say?”

“Yes.”

“Very well, I’ve heard it. Can we now put any further discussion of the matter completely out of court and get back to what we are here for? There is work to be done.”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now, where are yesterday’s graphs? Are they ready for the computer programming yet?”

“Not quite. I’m waiting for Isaacs to bring the charts of his timing readings on the feeding response films.”

“They should be here by now.”

“He was delayed this morning, you’ll remember.” She spoke a little nervously. “But he said he’d work through lunchtime to finish them. We could go over to histology and see—”

“Very well. And then I want to spend a little longer than usual briefing Miss Quinn. She will need clearly to understand what we are about to do. She’s shown no anxiety about the change in feeding patterns?”

“No. None at all. Just been her usual bovine self. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it, the way she plods through everything?”

He raised one eyebrow momentarily. “I find it refreshing. Well, Isaacs, then. Shall we go?”

She followed him from the room, grateful for the way her body had stopped shaking, and feeling a good deal happier than she would have thought possible. From here on, there should be few problems, as long as she could bite her tongue whenever necessary.

But as she followed George’s spare figure into the histology room, a sudden thought hit her. She’d better go and see the gyne people and get herself sorted out. Or would it be more discreet to see a GP? Perhaps it would. They were as well able to prescribe the Pill as anyone else, after all. There must be no more complications.

  The sound rang through her head, cutting wide swaths of pain, channeling deep rifts which filled with the memory of the way Jenny had used to sound. She didn’t want to look at him, at the redness of his face, the tendrils of hair darkened by his sweating, but she could not raise her eyes. She just sat there, feeling the heat of his body coming through her overall to her knees, and added her own cries of silent anguish deep inside herself to the loud desperation of his.

“Lift him a little closer, Miss Quinn,” Dr. Briant said loudly, raising his voice above the noise. “And turn him towards you. I want to be certain that the breast fills his entire field of vision.”

She moved woodenly, as though her arms were not her own, watching her square red hands slip under his small body, raise him
and turn him toward her, and he stopped his squalling for a brief moment. His eyes moved and then focused again at the level of her exposed nipple, and then the gaping redness split his face again, and the sound, wailing and furious, splintered her head once more.

I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. The words slid from side to side of her mind, battering at her lowered eyelids as still she watched the crumpled outraged face. But she didn’t move, still sat in the same heavy posture, her shoulders held rigid, feeling the sweat on her own body under the heaviness of her breasts and around her waist under the crumpled clothes.

“All right, now, bring him closer, so that he can almost reach—not too close—now be ready to let his cheek touch your skin. Slowly, now,” Briant said. And she raised her eyes for the first time and looked at him and knew the misery and hate that were filling her showed on her face, and she could do nothing about it.

But they were all watching the baby, the six of them, Barbara Hervey with her chin held high so that she could see over Dr. Briant’s shoulder, Briant himself with his head poked forward, a stopwatch in one hand, the other four just as absorbed in their greedy watching of his bewildered misery. And she hated them all, and let the knowledge of her hate fill the craters in her mind that his crying was still gouging out.

“Starting
now
,” Briant said, and even through the noise of the crying she was aware of the click of the stopwatch. She let her hands obey, raising the rigid hot little body, letting his cheek touch her, and feeling her skin move under it. Immediately, the damp head turned in toward her, the red gape changing its shape, the cry changing too, becoming sharper, and then she couldn’t help it and moved one hand to lift her breast toward him, offering the nipple to his seeking mouth.

“No, let him find it,” Briant said quickly. “That’s it. He’s there. Now, hold still. Excellent, excellent.”

Take it, take it, Georgie boy, take it, I want you to, please, for me, take it, not for them, for me.

But he fought and rolled his head against her, and the crying rose and fell, and still he pulled his head away, and she touched his cheek and then cradled his head in her hand, turning it toward her,
and the nipple touched his lips, and she arched her back so that her breasts lifted and his mouth was filled, and then he was pulling, drawing on her and gulping, but still jerking slightly against her arm as he pumped his jaws, gradually establishing a rhythm, his eyes tight closed.

The redness of his face faded as she watched him, as she felt herself pushing peace and comfort and safety back into him, and she took a long slow breath, willing the fine tremor that was moving every muscle in her to stop.

“Well done, Miss Quinn. You controlled that beautifully. Next time, though, don’t guide him as you did today. It was clearly necessary this first time, but not next time. Barbara, I want to see that rerun as soon as possible. How quickly can you get the film processed? And the blood pressure chart and the EEG and ECG, Isaacs? Can you get them graphed immediately? Vernon, I want to check your timing with mine. I think I might have been fractionally slow on the finish.”

“We could rerun in an hour. Will that do?” Barbara Hervey said.

“An hour. Hmmm. How would that suit you, Isaacs? Yes? Splendid then. Everybody, please. I want to discuss all our individual observations in depth.”

They moved toward the door, following Briant, and Isobel said woodenly, “Do I continue as usual, after this feed?”

“What? Oh, yes. Yes, Miss Quinn. As usual, please. Very much so. It is imperative that no further alterations in pattern be added until the next session. We want to measure the effects of today’s experiment on his learning processes. Just as usual, and thank you for an excellent piece of work.” He smiled at her kindly, but already he was abstracted by his own thinking, not really aware of her, and she knew it. “Not easy to get such timing right, not easy.”

And then they were gone, leaving her alone with the watchful monitors and the still tense but suckling baby at her breast, and the fury and misery and hate in her seethed and moved, and then settled into a cold hardness deep in her belly.

I’m sorry, my lovely one, I’m sorry. Isobel didn’t know, little one, I didn’t know.

But you guessed. You guessed it would be something like this. Didn’t you? You knew what they would do, just as you know how they’ll be when they watch the film of it.

She felt physically sick as she thought about that, the way they could watch the suffering he had gone through and not care about it. To do so wicked a thing as they had done, to so frighten and hurt a baby who had never been frightened or hurt ever, and then to actually watch it twice over!

But all babies cry, a small voice seemed to say suddenly inside her head. All babies cry sometimes. Jenny cried. They all do.

But not Georgie, not my little Georgie. He never has, and it hurts him more to suffer. He’s never suffered with me, and now they’re making me make him cry, and he’ll grow to hate me, not them, and it’s—I can’t stand it any more, and it must be meant or why else should I have been doing what I have these past days? God must have put the idea into me, just as He sent me here to look after him from the beginning. He must mean me to do something about it. Mustn’t He?

  “My dear young man, you really will have to be a little more direct, you know. I’m a very busy man, and I have only limited time to spare for you, I’m afraid. And although you have been talking to me here for the best part of ten minutes, I still don’t entirely grasp what it is you’re trying to say.”

“Ten minutes? I waited for you the best part of an hour, kicking my heels here like some rubbernecker or other!”

“Indeed?” Gurney was nettled. Who the devil did this cocky little sod think he was talking to? “Well, some people’s time is more expendable than that of others. And as I say, I am somewhat at a loss to understand precisely what it is you want of me.”

“Oh, come on, Mr. Gurney! I made it clear enough, didn’t I? Without exactly spelling it out—and I’ve more sense than to do that. Never know what’s bugged these days, do you?”

“Bugged?” Gurney frowned. “Are you suggesting there are—that we use
listening
devices here? That’s outrageous! I must ask you to—”

“Oh, all right, all right. Maybe it was a bit much to expect this
place to be as with-it as all that. All right! You want it in plain easy words, I’ll give it you. You’re gunning for my old man, aren’t you?”

“You become more and more insulting, young man. Members of this House do not go
gunning
for any one individual, as you put it.”

“No?” Ian lit another cigarette and blew the smoke carelessly in Gurney’s direction. “Maybe you should, but that’s none of my concern. Look, are you or are you not trying to get a change in the law to stop people like my revered papa from mucking about with human life, and the rest of that rot? Because if you’re not, the papers have been spreading a lot of lies about you.”

“I am presenting a private member’s bill that may have an effect on your father’s work, yes. But I don’t see that—”

“And I should think it’d be a lot easier for you if you could find out things about my old man that show him up for what he is.”

“Oh?” Gurney felt his annoyance drift away. “What sort of things?”

“Like the way he’s started having it off with one of the women scientists around that Unit of his, leaving my mother in a terrible state, not knowing where to turn for money.” Ian looked virtuous. “You should just see the state she’s in, poor soul. And there he is, loaded with cash, and—”

“Loaded? That’s hardly the word, is it? I understood he was painfully short of funds to operate the project. I have spoken at some length with Mr. Kegan, the hospital secretary, and not even he, with his intimate knowledge of the project, and his access to the Unit, could show that there was any spare money.”

“Ah, but he’s not the Prof’s son, is he? And I am. I’ve really got what you might call the horse’s mouth, haven’t I? Any news I might have to give you, you can count on.”

“Why are you coming to me with tales like this?”

Again Ian produced his virtuous expression. “Well, I mean! The way he’s treating my poor mother! It’s enough to upset any man, isn’t it? You’ve got a mother yourself, I daresay.”

“Hmmph. Well, let me hear precisely what evidence you have and we’ll see what we can do about it.” Gurney reached for a sheet
of paper and a pen from the desk in front of him. “Your father, you say, is—”

“Oh, come on, not so fast, Mr. Gurney! What about my side of it?”

“Your side of it?”

“Yeah! My side of it! I suppose you have to have this all legal, and so on? Got to have a sworn statement from me or something of that sort? It wouldn’t be evidence without it.”

“Oh. I suppose so, although you can trust me not to reveal my source of information.”

“I much care if you reveal it! You can say what you like once we’ve come to an agreement.”

“What sort of agreement?”

“The only sort that means anything, Mr. Gurney. A hard cash one. I’ve got my mother to think of, after all. She’s got to be looked after, hasn’t she? And if I don’t, who will? To put it nice and plain, Mr. Gurney, what’s in it for me if I tell you it all the way you want it?”

Gurney pushed the paper away from him and looked at the grinning face in front of him. Ye gods. I’ve met a few, but this one—