The Thinktank That Leaked Read online

  Paula’s hour-glass figure had never really produced any compulsive effect on me and I found her particularly unalluring in these circumstances. She’d bored me into marriage and bored me out again; and it would be generous to describe her even as buxom. Dress sense aided and abetted with an excessively large charge account at various fashion houses made the best of a dubious job but they couldn’t prevent her breasts looking like unreliable cantilever protrusions or her bottom splaying out unbecomingly when she sat down.

  Paula said, “Does she have a key too?”

  “Paula, please!”

  “Paula isn’t pleased,” she said. “Divorce is one thing; treachery is quite another.”

  I was torn. I wasn’t going to be tricked into doing what Paula hoped — make hasty explanations to alibi myself with Nesta so that Paula herself could revel in the fact that I felt hopelessly cornered. Thus a remark from me such as ‘I told you before you had no right to use that key, you should have returned it when you quit’ would have all the conviction of a put-up job in Savil Row Police Station. I could almost hear the jingle of handcuffs.

  “Who,” said Paula, attempting to sluice her throat with whisky but slopping most of it on the settee, “is this young person I see before me?”

  I said, with a kind of stammered decorum, “I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce you. Nesta, this is my ex, Paula. Paula, this is Nesta Crabtree.”

  Paula said, “And have you known each other long?”

  Nesta said, “Not long enough to qualify for a key” — and gave me a look I’d rather not describe. I desperately wanted a drink myself; but both women knew that too, and so I couldn’t give way to this urge without crouching in one corner of the room and waving a white flag.

  My heart was pounding. I knew it seemed quite unforgivable to Nesta that we had made love on these very premises only the night before at appalling risk of the worst kind of scene the imagination could conjure. It was unforgivable; but I had been totally spontaneous and irresponsible and in love and somehow the frightful possibility of Paula showing up in the middle of it simply hadn’t entered by mind. Whether official or otherwise, honeymoons (contrary to the claims of Sexual Commercials put out by pub-crawling supermen, who measure the active size of their pricks as so many ecstatic anglers describe their latest catch) are sensitive, shy encounters because to have any meaning for both they incorporate a vast spectrum of loving, human expression. They are, above all things, intensely private. Yet Paula had a key. Now, she dangled it from her little finger. I had a moment’s hysterical vision of Nesta producing a teeny, mother-of-pearl automatic from her handbag and shooting the key neatly out of Paula’s hand.

  My ex now went to work. For once she wasn’t bored. That in itself was a catastrophe. On those few occasions when I’d seen her emerge from the boredom bubble the memory was all too clearly embossed on my mind. To Nesta she said, “The trouble with Roger is that he’s a professor — or at any rate, very nearly — and it is clear that his latest scientific project is to make a survey of the feminine population. Usually it’s students … very long legs and a sort of adulation for a man with at least three brains and — let us be just — more than his fair share of sex appeal. He uses it rather as Professor Lovell uses his radio-telescope … as a scientific tool, if you’ll forgive the expression. Lovell studies one kind of star; Kepter studies quite another.”

  I said, “Paula, it’s a waste of time making trouble —”

  “ — I don’t agree,” said Nesta. “Paula is saving me a great deal of it.” The critic was hearing better dialogue than had been expected of the Farce. “Besides, divorce itself doesn’t rule out mutual activities any more than a breach of contract suit prevents a comic double act continuing to entertain us on television. They sort out their differences in the courts and continue with the series unabashed.”

  Paula said, “I admire, allow me to say, your forthright use of the English language.”

  Nesta said, “I get more forthright as the show proceeds.”

  I said to Paula, “Will you please go, now? You’ve had your fun and —”

  Nesta interrupted. “In any case,” she said, as if I hadn’t spoken at all, “we are both involved in a slightly less banal drama than this one. I gather you receive telephone calls from a computer?”

  Paula said, “Only the very best computers. If I get one from a beginner I shall take out an ex-directory number.”

  “Which,” said Nesta, “I’m sure you’d issue privately to those whose telephone calls you still valued?” Nesta was staring, unblinkingly, at the Key. “I am speaking, of course, of only the very best computers.” She now stared at me. I’m ashamed to say I had to avert my eyes.

  Paula made an extravagant gesture which nearly knocked a lamp over. “We understand each other perfectly,” she said. “Roger is in the top league among computers … which is why he is so successful with his telephone calls. If the coin box rings at the campus there is an unseemly scuffle as all the longer-legged female students gouge each other’s eyes out to pick up the hottest receiver in town.”

  “No wonder they don’t do any work,” said Nesta.

  Paula eased herself off the sofa and conveyed her empty glass back to the drinks tray. “Tell me,” she said over her shoulder to Nesta, “Where do you get your clothes?”

  “East’s, mostly.”

  “Yes, I thought you had excellent taste,” said Paula, making her way back to the sofa with all the navigational panache of a Chinese junk in a gale. “This came from East’s. Like it?”

  “It is chic,” said Nesta.

  “And here we are,” said Paula, “two people with excellent taste, meeting on the premises of a connoisseur. By the sheer law of averages, we were bound to wind up here together, sooner or later.”

  “Still,” said Nesta, getting up to leave, “we mustn’t crowd him. It’s simply not fair on the rest of the male population to fly in the face of statistics … One man, one woman, as I believe they say in Church. Not that I go to Church, but some of it leaks through to the heathens …”

  She made for the door and left without another word.

  And I panicked. Totally. Close to tears, I gave Paula a piece of my mind which I won’t print here, gulped a drink, and dashed out after Nesta. I tried to tell myself that Paula was too drunk to have an inkling of what she’d actually done, so I didn’t waste time throttling her with her irritating and expensive stole, but I did miss the lift, and dashed down the stairs, two at a time, to find Nesta disappearing very rapidly around the corner into Pont Street.

  I ran up to her and I don’t know to this day what I said, or how long I went on saying it. I didn’t give a damn about dignity, because uppermost in my mind was the threat of Nesta’s total disillusionment in practically everything, the apparent swindle whereby I had allowed her to bare her heart in the MG when we’d first left the airfield together, and the questions she’d now be asking herself about my motives for everything upward and downward from trying to cure Mike’s suicidal attempts at flying an aeroplane.

  Nesta hailed a taxi and tried to get away. I forced my way in and felt insane doing so. The driver, apparently used to this kind of thing, decided not to bother to throw me out, though Nesta was screaming for him to stop the cab.

  “For God’s sake, Nesta —”

  “— Why pursue me, of all people? One thing, Roger: don’t pack it in at the university. You’ve got it made there. What do they do? — Queue up like cars at a filling station? Now get out.”

  “Nesta, Paula was drunk and lonely.”

  “And had a key so that she could assure herself of finding company whenever she needs it.”

  “I’ve told her repeatedly to return that key.”

  “The usual procedure is to change the lock. Instead of that you risk an encounter like that one during an act so private that even layabout drunks shove a prop against the door of a wooden shack to avoid the disgusting possibility of discovery.”

  “Nesta, it
is because it has never happened before that I didn’t think. I was — and am — utterly in love.”

  “With your own prick and its ability to prevaricate itself between the legs of the nearest sucker — providing that sucker meets the necessary specifications.”

  Somehow my grief turned to anger. I was furious because it would have been obvious to anyone in their right mind that no slick operator would make such a damnfool mistake. Somehow my tone of voice changed and with it my mood. And, for the first time I got a hearing. “Nesta, I’m leaving this taxi at the very next lights. But before I do, let me tell you this: it’s your own bloody selfish egocentricity that makes you think what you’re going all out to think. It’s largely contrived anyway because you’ve always been so spoiled that you’d like nothing better than have me crawl after you like a whipped dog. Your dismissal of the only guy who has ever really helped you — the unfortunate victim of your ingratitude in Geneva — is a case in point. You learned nothing from him except how to make a scene out of nothing. You’ll never bloody learn about people so do by all means go on patronizing your brother out of his chances of acquiring autonomy over his own activities and — incidentally — leave him some chance of finding a girl other than his own over-privileged sister.”

  The taxi stopped at the lights. I got out. Got into another taxi — and knew absolutely for certain that the world had fallen away from under my feet. Back at Sloane Street I could hardly find the strength to climb the steps of the building as far as the lift.

  Paula was still in the flat. She had made herself some coffee. She turned to me and saw my tears and said, “My God, what have I done?”

  “Paula. Get on the phone and call Nesta. She’ll be home by now. Explain what happened and this time tell her the truth. It’s no good your standing there weeping. You did it. I don’t suppose you can undo it, but you can try. And you can give me that coffee, because I need it more than you do. Somehow I’ve got to be fit enough to fly tonight.”

  “Roger, whatever happens you mustn’t fly. Not like that.”

  “Damn you! How dare you put yourself in a position to give me advice? Get to that phone. Here’s the number.” I scribbled it on the pad. “Don’t ever come here again. If you even think of using that key again I’ll take out an injunction. The lock will be changed the moment I can get it fixed.” I picked up the receiver. “Phone her.”

  I took the coffee into the kitchen and tried to stuff plain bread down my gullet. Somehow I’d got to nerve myself to fly that Grumman — a night landing on an unknown field with no flarepath and, quite possibly, unseen rocks to wreck the aeroplane, or a sheep in the way that I couldn’t see until the propeller, the engine, and my own body was buried in a mixture of blood and turf.

  Two minutes later Paula came into the kitchen and said, “There’s no reply.”

  My stomach had gone. “There’s got to be a reply.”

  “There isn’t.”

  “There’s a party going on there. You must have dialled the wrong number.”

  “I didn’t. I may be drunk but I can dial.”

  “Dial again.”

  She did and there was no answer.

  Paula said wretchedly, “I could go round there.”

  “You’re not going within a mile of that girl. The phone is one thing — I can at least hear what you say. But the idea of your breathing down her neck —”

  “ — Roger, I promise —”

  “Don’t ever promise anything.”

  “God, you must love her.”

  “Don’t use words the meaning of which you don’t understand. Just go to hell.”

  “That’s where I live — in hell.”

  “Then you’ll feel at home there … No, I didn’t mean that. Just don’t get drunk, ever. Just never get drunk. Get the message?”

  “Yes.”

  “Never get drunk.”

  “Isn’t there … anything … I can do to help?”

  “Yes, there is. Make more coffee. The real stuff. You know where it’s kept, all right. Make it strong and make it fast. I’ve got to be fit to fly. Then you can ring the Blue Star Garage — the night man’s name is Jay, Mr. Jay. Ask him if my car is ready.”

  “I’ll drive you to the airfield.”

  “You shall not. Do exactly what I ask or simply go. No advice. No flowers. Just do it.”

  I think I drove to Elstree safely. I think I did. What I was trying to do was to make myself a safe person to be airborne. Not only because of me, and my own skin. It’s true to say that though I’m not the self-destructive type I wasn’t placing as much emphasis on my own survival as usual. No more than that but there was a certain difference.

  In the sky there are other aeroplanes. If you hit them — as Mike had so nearly hit mine — you kill. It’s not how many you kill. One is more than enough. A dead victim of an unhappy pilot is the essence of murder. The fact that I would also go spinning down with one wing off wasn’t the point. I had to show to myself that I could still be sane and sensible and safe for others in this state of grief and shock. Otherwise I was not fit to call myself a human being capable of standing on my own two feet — let alone on the rudder pedals.

  The gates were still open but I couldn’t find anybody. The tower had closed down by this time and officially I was not entitled to execute a take-off in any case. No flight plan had been confirmed or signed. It was already getting dark.

  Bravo-Delta was parked ready. As I always put the chocks in place one way and the mechanic always put them in the other I knew that it had been prepared for flight.

  I didn’t hesitate; but climbed in and did the initial checks and clipped on my harness properly and started the engine and did the rest of the cockpit drills.

  I set the giro and checked all the instruments and switched on the radio and selected the Bristol frequency.

  I let off the brakes and went a little way forward and slammed on the toe-brakes to test them. They worked. I switched on the landing lights and ran up the engine and tested both ignition systems and found nothing wanting.

  I took off the brakes by kicking both pedals at once; then used them to take the taxitrack corner accurately in order to get the aircraft to the signal square. I noted that the runway in use was now Zero-Nine — same runway of course but the opposite end. I double checked this against the windsock which I could just see in the glow of the landing lights though it was a long way to the left.

  I saw the headlights of a car coming through the gates and I assumed that some character had seen me manoeuvring and was going to try to prevent me getting off.

  I therefore stepped up the power and completed the taxying as far as the runway itself, then glanced at all quarters of the sky in case someone might conceivably be making a night landing though this was very unlikely.

  The car had continued right up the taxitrack and I thought I’d had it until I suddenly noticed it was white.

  I looked again and saw that it was an MG. A mirage, of course, but an MG.

  The driver of this MG pulled onto the grass and switched off the lights and jumped out and ran towards my aeroplane.

  The driver appeared to be a girl, an unusually lovely girl, with hair that was incredibly alive and a body that was athletically coordinated as she ran.

  This girl was shouting something which I couldn’t hear because of the engine. I throttled right back and applied the brakes and the girl came closer.

  She seemed like a streak of all the loveliness in the universe and she wore white jeans. And when she got closer I could see that she was out of breath and yet calling something and sort of smiling and yet rather rueful.

  She slowed down and ran around behind the tailplane as I reopened the hatch.

  And this girl climbed in and I forced myself to look at the instruments and execute the vital actions for take-off. The girl in white jeans closed the hatch and adjusted her harness and picked up the chart which had been lying on the empty righthand seat and in the dim light she tried to rea
d the chart.

  And I taxied up to the broad white line and I carefully lined up exactly straight and I opened the throttle.

  I watched the airspeed indicator very carefully and allowed for the extra weight of a slim girl passenger in white jeans and I eased back and let the nosewheel get clear of the ground.

  I watched the darkening runway slip away beneath and I checked the heading and I let the speed increase by a further ten knots and then steepened into a standard climb.

  The girl in white jeans noted the setting of the altimeter then changed it to the correct pressure for QNH and didn’t explain how she’d acquired this necessary and vital information.

  At three hundred feet I hit the flap switch and turned off the landing lights and made sure my navigation lights and flashers were working correctly.

  At five hundred feet I began a slow right hand turn onto a heading of Two-six-five, holding off bank and continuing the climb.

  When I was on the new heading I put on my headset and adjusted the mike and the girl next to me plugged in the other set and did the same.

  I said, “You take control.”

  She said over the intercom, “I have control.”

  I said, “Isn’t Paula a cow.”

  She said, “Just drunk.”

  I said, “Do you despise men who cry all the way home like I did?”

  She said, “Do you despise girls who think the only thing left to do is to die without the only man they’ve ever loved or ever will love?”

  I said, “Do you always assume the worst and stop trusting people instantaneously because a pathetic boring ex-wife clings to a key she was told to return months before?”

  She said, “Do you put up with girls in white jeans who allow themselves to be manipulated by boring overdressed snobs who have nothing better to do than mess up other people’s lives?”

  I said, “Can you take a good look around your side while I take a good look around my side to make sure there’s no other traffic anywhere near us.”

  She did this.

  I said, “Have you ever had a sound spanking in the cockpit of a tiny aeroplane while you keep one hand on the control wheel to make sure we don’t go into a spin?”