Timescape

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

SHE APPEARED ON TIME AT THEIR AGREED-UPON meeting place, the low stone wall in front of King’s. Peterson hesitated for only an instant, rummaging for the phrase that would call up her name. Ah, yes, Laura-at-Bowes. “Hope I haven’t kept you waiting,” she said, smoothing her dress with dainty hands.

He murmured something in automatic reply, struck again by how pretty she was. He noticed with amusement that she was wearing a simple dress that was a copy of one of Sarah’s models. A good copy. It would have fooled almost anyone.

Laura was impressed with the car, a late model custom-modified for him. She looked wonderingly at the bossed wood and understated dash, yet said nothing. Trying to appear blasé, he judged. Even Sarah, who must have been sophisticated at age five, had exclaimed over the interior. Come to think of it, the only person he could recall who had not been impressed was Renfrew. He wondered what that meant.

When they entered the restaurant, some miles outside Cambridge, the head waiter apparently recognised him. The other male diners didn’t; it was Laura who drew the stares. Gin-and-tonics, opulent linen napkins, the usual. Laura looked round the room in a way suggesting that she was taking mental notes for her friends. Impressive, he supposed, but stylistically a hodge-podge. Basically an English country inn with touches of French elegance that didn’t fit. The chintz, the large stone fireplace filled now with plants for the summer, the beamed ceiling, the low round oak tables—all were comfortably familiar, solid. The chandeliers and tinted mirrors were wrong. Doubly so for the flatplate TV giving a not-quite-right view of a French courtyard, with distant moving figures in the fields, farmers apparently gathering hay. And the fake Louis XVI half-round side-table with its bowed gilt legs was simply a monstrosity.

“Frangers!” Laura exclaimed.

“Yes,” he said.

She remarked very precisely, “I wonder what the rognons de veau flambé is like? And the cotes d’agneau a l’ail?”

“The first, probably so-so. They’re big on flaming here. The second, more likely adolescent mutton than real lamb. Your French is quite good.” Might as well get that in. He phrased a longer compliment in French.

“Sorry, I only speak food.”

He laughed, pleased to find a touch of wit in her.

They discussed shiplifting in Bowes & Bowes; Peterson had deflected most of her questions about Council matters. “Why not a guard at the door, searching briefcases?” he asked.

“Mr. Smythe wants ours to remain a gentlemen’s establishment, where the customers don’t feel they’re under suspicion.”

Peterson recalled a time when one could count on having rooms in college, and was given sherry when one went round to one’s tutor, and wore a white dinner jacket for the May Balls. Now all the colleges admitted women, and women shared rooms with the men if they liked, and there was even an all-gay college, and academic gowns weren’t required anywhere.

She went on about how rude the students were today. He nodded, guessing that this was the sort of thing she expected he would like to hear. Not far wrong, actually. But it was her charm that interested him, not her opinions.

He brought his mind to bear on the situation. It seemed like a straightforward problem in the timeless sexual game. Perhaps it was the predictability of it that explained his inattention to detail; he had to force himself to follow the thread of her talk. She wanted to get into films or maybe acting, check. A flat in London if she could only find some way to move, right. Cambridge was dull, unless you liked the dreadful academic sort of amusements. She felt something really did need fixing in the current political situation, but had no suggestions as to what that might be. No surprises, but she was awfully pretty and had a graceful way of moving.

She accepted all of the vegetables that arrived in silver dishes, each in its own sauce. Probably didn’t get much variety at home, particularly since the French crop failures. He speculated for a moment about whether the Council should have stepped in on that one, ruling out the new techniques, and then pushed the subject back into place; no point in dwelling on past issues.

Since he was having trouble focusing, he began directing the flow of talk. It was easy enough to work in a recent state function, slide a few names past at the right speed to be understood, but not so slowly that she would suspect he was dropping them in deliberately. Then he slipped in a reference to Charles and she blurted, “Do you really know the King?” Actually he was on respectful and professional terms with Charles, but had no hesitation in exaggerating the relationship as far as believable. He felt confident that she did not even notice the discreet gesture with which he ordered another half bottle from the wine waiter. She was getting slightly giggly now. He took advantage of it to try rather more risqué stories on her. At one point she covered her glass with her hand, protesting that she had had enough. He set the bottle down and started to tell her the salacious details behind the Duke of Shropshire’s recent divorce. He quickly got to the scene in court when the famous “headless” photo was produced. Lady Pringle had sworn it was the Duke, she would recognize him anywhere. The judge had asked to see the photo. He found it to be essentially a close-up of a man’s genitalia, though his companion’s face was clearly identifiable. Laura was giggling so helplessly that he felt sure she did not see him refill her glass. As he went on with how the judge had asked Lady Pringle how she could be so sure it was the Duke, he raised his glass and Laura imitated him unthinkingly. He let her swallow her wine before he told her Lady Pringle’s reply, which had so convulsed the court that the judge had had to order it cleared.

He sat back and watched her. Things were going splendidly. She had abandoned her affected flirtatious attitude and, momentarily, her refined accent.

“Oh, go on with you,” she said, her vowels sliding obliquely through a range of East Anglian diphthongs.

The waiter had pushed a trolley of sickeningly elaborate French pastries to their table. As he expected, she chose the creamiest and attacked it with the unabashed eagerness of a schoolgirl.

Over coffee she became earnest again, watching her vowels and pressing him about politics. She repeated the common newspaper cant about irresponsible corporations pushing questionable new products into the world without a thought for social impact. Peterson resigned himself to sitting through this standard lecture and then, without quite realizing it, found himself thinking aloud about matters he had shelved for a long time. “No, no, you’ve got it wrong,” he said suddenly. “The wrong turning came when we started going for the socially relevant research in the first place. We accepted the idea that science was like other areas, where you make a product and the whole thing can be run from the top down.”

“Well, surely it can,” Laura said. “If the right people are at the top—”

“There are no right people,” he said with energy. “That’s what I’m just now learning. See, we went to the senior scientists and asked them to pick the most promising fields. Then we supported those and cut the rest, to ‘focus our efforts.’ But the real diversity in science comes from below, not from innovative managers above. We narrowed the compass of science until nobody saw anything but the approved problems, the conventional wisdom. To save money we stifled imagination and verve.”

“It seems to me what we have is too much science.”

“Too much applied work without really understanding it, yes. Without pursuing the basics, you get a generation of technicians. That’s what we have now.”

“More checking to see the unforeseen side effects—”

“To see you must have vision,” he said earnestly. “I’m just beginning to catch on to that fact. All this talk of bloody ‘socially relevant’ work assumes a bureaucrat somewhere is the best judge of what’s useful. So now the problems are outstripping the can-do types, the folks with limited horizons, and, and…”

He stopped, puzzled with himself at this outburst. It had altered the carefully cultivated tone of the evening, perhaps fatally. Maybe spending the day with Renfrew had done it. For a moment there he had been arguing fervently against the very point of view that had brought him so rapidly to the top.

He took a long pull of coffee and chuckled warmly. “I rather got off the beam on that one, didn’t I? Must be the wine,” Properly played, the momentary outburst could be used to show that he was passionate about the world, involved, independent thinker, etc., all of which might well appeal. He set to work insuring that they did.

The moon was high above the trees. An owl swooped silently across the patch of sky above the clearing. Cautiously he slid his arm out from under her head and looked at his watch. Past midnight. Goddamn. He stood up and started dressing. She lay still, sprawled quite unself-consciously, legs flung wide as he had left her.

She was lying on his jacket. He stooped to retrieve it and in the moonlight saw tears on her cheeks. Oh, shit. Surely he wasn’t going to have to cope with that too.

“Better put your clothes on,” he said. “It’s getting late.”

She sat up and fumbled with her dress. “Ian,” she began in a small voice, “that’s never happened to me before.”

“Come on,” he said, not believing her. “You can’t tell me you were a virgin.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

He searched for her meaning. “You never—?”

“I—not with a man—not like that—I never had—” She stumbled over her words, trailing off, embarrassed.

So that was it. He didn’t help her out. He felt weary and impatient, unmoved by her implied compliment. It was a point of honor to satisfy them, no more. God knows she had taken long enough over it. Still, it had been a better job than that Japanese nymphomaniac in La Jolla, Kiefer’s wife. There was now an unpleasant twinge when he thought of her. He had done the usual—indeed, more. She had come again and again and seemed insatiable. There had been a kind of feverish clutching to her, a thing he had noticed in many women lately. But that was their problem, not his. He sighed and pushed away the memory.

He shook out his jacket, brushing away blades of grass. She was silent now, still fiddling with the tie on her dress, probably trying to make it into the same bow she’d left home with. He led the way from the clearing, empty of any further desire to touch her. When she slipped a hand into his he thought it polite to let it stay there; he would be coming to Cambridge again, after all. Absent-mindedly he scratched a midge bite on his neck that he’d collected while tussling in the grass. Tomorrow was going to be another long one. He flexed his shoulders. A cold ache had settled into the muscles at the base of his neck. Let’s see, there was the subcommittee meeting tomorrow, and some backup reading on the Sacred Cow War still sputtering along in India… He realized with a start that he was living slightly in the future these days, as an ingrained habit. At Renfrew’s he’d been distracted by thoughts of dinner and wine. At the restaurant he had watched Laura’s hair and thought how it might look fanned out across a crisp white pillow. Then, immediately after the act, his mind had drifted on to the next day and what he had to do. Christ, a donkey driven by the carrot.

He was faintly surprised when they emerged from the damp woods into the moonlight and he remembered he was still in Cambridge.