The Tomb and Other Stories Read online

  I need a clean lace cloth for the tea tray so I go to the sideboard in the living room. As I’m passing through I sneak a glance in their direction. Deirdre’s kicked off her shoes and she’s curled up on the big soft sofa with her feet tucked in, the way she’s done ever since she was a little girl. The man is sitting in an armchair, the leather jacket draped over one corner. He’s talking in a low voice but I hear snatches of the conversation.

  “…the cutting tools work fine…shifting the rocks won’t be a problem…the lasers are the real risk…there’s got to be another route...”

  I grab the cloth and hurry back to seek refuge in the kitchen. I knew it all along: it’s not terrorism, it’s organized crime! They’re planning a jewel robbery! How did my daughter get mixed up in this sort of thing? The whole point of letting her go to university was so she could meet nice people.

  I wonder if anyone saw him come in. I bet Mrs Astbury’s net curtains were twitching; she doesn’t miss a thing. Not that she could miss him; he probably drives one of those huge white Cadillacs with the smoked glass windows. Or is it pop stars who have those? I suppose it would be black if it was the Mafia, and he’s almost certainly Mafia. I hope he didn’t park it right outside, it’ll block both our neighbours’ drives. I’d better check.

  I go quietly upstairs and look out of the bedroom window. I can see a blue roof over the privet hedge. It’s one of those little French hatchbacks. Obviously that’s just to put people off the scent. If he’s a wanted man he’s not going to advertise his whereabouts, is he? Well, at least he’s not blocking the drives.

  On the way downstairs I pass by the living room door and pause for a moment to listen. He’s not talking so quietly now.

  “The stuff has got to be one hundred per cent pure.”

  “What, the raw material or the powder?”

  “Both. The Russians won’t stand for the slightest contamination.”

  I go back to the kitchen with a heavy heart. So they’re into drugs too! Has he got Deirdre hooked yet? Now I think about it she has been a bit off lately. How can you tell for sure if someone’s an addict? Don’t they get pinpoint pupils or something?

  I’m still going through the motions of making tea. Suppose he doesn’t want tea? These people don’t drink tea, do they? Whisky, more like it, straight from the bottle. Henry doesn’t like whisky but I think we still have half a bottle in the drinks cupboard for entertaining. It must be years old – what if it’s gone off? He could get violent! He could murder us both – it happens all the time, you see it on the news! I feel sick. Henry’s not back from Frankfurt till Friday. When he comes in he’ll find me lying dead right here on the kitchen floor and police photographers everywhere…

  Now that I look at it the kitchen floor’s a bit grubby. I can’t have it looking like that if people are taking pictures; I’ll give it a quick once-over with the mop. That’s better. Kettle’s boiled; I’ll make the tea.

  I take the tray in and put it down on the coffee table. I pour a cup for Deirdre and as I pass it to her I have a good close look at her pupils.

  “Is anything the matter, Mum?”

  “Ummm…I thought your mascara was smudged, that’s all.”

  “How can that be? I’m not wearing any.”

  “Ah. Must have been a trick of the light, then.”

  Deirdre’s squinting suspiciously at me but I think I’ve covered up all right. Actually her pupils look quite normal to me. What was he saying as I walked in? Something about “Venus walker”. Must be slang for prostitute. Is that it, then? Omigod, the white slave trade! My only daughter’s going to be sent abroad for the nightly pleasure of some oil sheikh or Russian gangster…

  “Isn’t it exciting, Mum? Phil’s involved in making the Venus Lander.”

  My mind’s a total blank. I suppose my face is, too, because she adds, “Come on, Mum. You saw the documentary on tele. The unmanned space probe that’s going to land and move around on Venus? The Russians are going to launch it from Baikonur.”

  “You’re…a …rocket…scientist?” I say it slowly so that I can understand the words coming out of my own mouth.

  “Not exactly,” he replies. “I’m not an expert on propulsion systems, I’m a planetary geophysicist. Our Department – Astrophysics – is tasked with analyzing the surface and I’m involved with the systems engineering. Right now I’m trying to build in more redundancy. You see, the probe’s got to survive long enough to send useful data from a number of sites. That’s quite a challenge because Venus is a very hostile environment for any sort of instrumentation. So if one system goes down we’ve got to be able to switch to another.”

  None of this means a lot to me, and mainly I’m registering with interest that he doesn’t speak like a character from East Enders. I’d like to say something sensible but I can’t think of anything, so I sit there blinking. Deirdre rescues me.

  “Phil’s designed a machine that cuts raw material from the surface and grinds it into a powder. Then it uses a laser to vaporize it and does the analysis automatically. And all the information gets sent back to Earth.”

  I see my chance and play my only trump. “What about contamination?”

  They both look impressed. Actually Deirdre looks more astonished than impressed.

  “That’s a very good question, Mrs Fairhaven,” Phil replies. “Of course it’s absolutely vital that any samples we take from Venus are pure. If they were contaminated with material from Earth the analysis would be meaningless. So everything I design has to be assembled under clean and sterile conditions. There’s an internationally agreed specification for microbial burden but the Russians want us to exceed it. If we don’t, we won’t be going – it’s as simple as that.”

  We chat a bit more, and it turns out that Deirdre has been doing her third-year undergraduate physics project in the lab where Phil is a Postdoctoral Fellow. That’s how they met, of course. Phil gets to his feet.

  “Sorry, I must make a move. We’ve got to stay on schedule – if we don’t we’ll miss the launch window. Nice to meet you, Mrs Fairhaven, and thanks for the tea. See you tomorrow, Dee.”

  We see Phil to the front door and Deirdre waves as he drives off in his little blue car. We go back to the sitting room and I sit down hard.

  She comes over. “What’s the matter, Mum?”

  “I’m all right, dear.”

  “He’s nice, isn’t he? He’s always shy with people to start with, but once he gets started talking about his work he can’t stop.”

  “He’s not…how he appears,” I say weakly.

  “Now, Mum, I’m always telling you…”

  We say it together, “…not to judge people by appearances.”

  I get up and we give each other a big hug. She’s laughing and my shoulders are shaking and I’m sure she thinks I’m laughing too, but then she can’t see the tears of relief in my eyes.

  [First published in Alexei’s Tree and Other Stories, Matador, 2005]

  Domestic Goddess

  “Be a darling and order a takeaway, would you Adam? I just can’t face cooking tonight.”

  “What’s the matter, Natalie?”

  “My legs are killing me. It’s that bloody exercise video. That’s the third session this week. And my muscles haven’t stopped shouting from the first one.”

  She flopped into an armchair and sighed with relief at the touch of the cool leather on her burning limbs.

  “I can get some pizzas.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Pino will deliver; I’ll give him a ring. Have you got the number?”

  “On the cork board in the kitchen.”

  “Okay, I’ll use the phone there. What size do you want? Medium? Large?”

  “Large.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be on a diet?

  “Don’t be ridiculous. All that exercise has given me an appetite like a horse. I’m ravenous. How the hell can I diet?”

  “What about the column in Women’s Wants?”
/>   “They can keep wanting. On second thoughts make it very large.”

  “What topping?”

  “All of them.”

  She dragged a chair over with her big toe and lifted her smooth, tanned legs carefully onto it

  God, my tummy muscles. What have they done to me?

  She closed her eyes, hearing Adam making the call, spelling out the order in halting Italian. Pino’s in the High Street was one of their favourite haunts and they were well known there.

  “Si…una napoletana…una con tutti. Si, con tutti. Grande…molto grande.” His voice sailed in from the kitchen. “Nat, do you want a side salad?”

  “Yes.”

  “E due insalata mista. Va bene. Grazie.”

  Adam reappeared.

  “It’s on its way.”

  “Good. When it comes I’m having it here. I can’t move.”

  “What do you want to drink with it?”

  “There’s some beer in the fridge. I’ll have one of those. In fact I’ll have one now.”

  Adam moved lightly into the kitchen. She heard the clink of glass, the hiss of escaping gas, and he came back with a half-empty bottle and a rapidly frosting tumbler brimming with foam.

  “Thanks darling. Mmm, God I needed that. What are you having?”

  “Tonic.”

  “Oh, you are a good boy.”

  She took another deep draft of the beer, topped up the glass and set down the empty bottle. He sat down and looked at her appraisingly.

  “You’re a good colour, Nat.”

  “Oh? You think this shade of puce suits me?” She picked up a copy of Vogue and fanned her face with it. “God, I’m boiling. I hate sweating.”

  “Have you finished the video, then?”

  “Yes, thank God. I could have wept when Herbie said ‘Okay folks, that’s a wrap’. Of course they’ve still got to do the editing and dub in my voice-overs but at least the hard part’s over. Trouble is, the contract says I have to go back to the Club for six weeks after the release.”

  “You can manage that can’t you? The first couple of sessions are the worst. You do get used to it, you know, Nat.”

  “I don’t intend to get used to it. It’s all right for you. Everyone knows professional tennis players have to be fit. But they think I’m just as hard. You know, like when we make love we don’t sigh, we clang.”

  “Why do you have to go there for six weeks?”

  “Part of the marketing. The Health Club lets us use their premises for the shoot and their name for the publicity and their Fitness Instructors. I add the image. Everyone’s supposed to get the idea I go there all the time.”

  “You have to go then.”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “What about the contract?”

  “Well, there’s this clause that says I should be there at least for the first six weeks after release unless there’s an overriding reason.”

  “What’s an overriding reason?”

  “Toby managed to get that bit added. It’s something they can tell their clients when they come to the Club expecting to see me there and I’m nowhere in sight. Something convincing. Toby insisted on that, otherwise I’d really be committed.”

  “He’s a good agent, Toby.”

  “Yes, but that’s only a start. Now I need an overriding reason. What on earth can I tell them?”

  “You could say you’ve sprained an ankle.”

  “What, without suing anyone for it?”

  “Yeah. Say it was nobody’s fault.”

  “No one’s going to believe that for a minute. It’s always somebody’s fault.”

  “Well, tell them you’ve gone to Morocco to research a new cookery series. ‘Natalie Cooks: Foods of the Mediterranean’.”

  “Adam, darling, you know how much I hate cooking. I only got through the last series because Mrs. Silverman did all the recipes and prepared them off camera. And she said she’s had enough. Actually I think her precise words were ‘Never again’.”

  “You could do a book signing.”

  “Now that is a good idea. Somewhere remote, like Glasgow. I’ll get Toby to phone the literary agent tomorrow. He can chase up Helen at the same time; she was supposed to be ghost-writing the sequel. A book signing is only going to work once, though. Got any other ideas?”

  “The gardening series was very successful. What was it called? ‘Landscape Gardening on a Budget’? You could do a sequel. Call it ‘Landscape Gardening on a Large Budget’. Start with Versailles.”

  “I’m not doing another gardening programme. My hands dry up and my nail varnish gets all chipped.”

  “Okay, let’s think. How about this? You’re off to Africa to defend wild animals: elephants, lions, that sort of thing. Oh, you already did a series like that, didn’t you? Well, you could defend something else. Porcupines or wart hogs or something.”

  “I’m not going to Africa ever again. The heat! And the insects! The only way they could get me to complete the last shoot was inside a mosquito net the size of a marquee. Can’t you think of anything else?”

  “I don’t know. You’re an icon, a role model for housewives who want to be slim and fit like you, cook super meals like you, have a nice garden like you, be socially responsible like you. What else is there? I know: you’re going to California to audition for a film.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t act.”

  [First published in Alexei’s Tree and Other Stories, Matador, 2005]

  A Doll Called Sally

  (with an affectionate bow in the direction of Damon Runyon)

  [Author’s note: In the 1980s I was course organizer for the Intercalated Degree in Anatomical Studies at the University of Birmingham. One of my jobs was to make medical students aware of the opportunity. Even medical students can be persuaded to read a short story, so this was one of my handouts. It later appeared in Alexei’s Tree and Other Stories, Matador, 2005]

  One day I am in my office at the Medical School along about nine bells when there is a knock at the door and in walks a young doll. In fact I recognise this doll right away because I remember she does not fall asleep in my lecture, and this is by no means a common occurrence in these parts. So I give her a large hello and say to her to take the weight off her puppies and tell me what is on her mind.

  She is a cute-looking doll with hair as black as a yard up a chimney and big brown eyes and a very nice smile, except I only learn afterwards about the smile because right now she is wearing a very sorrowful face indeed. I see a lot of sad faces in my time, especially around the exam notice-boards, but I wish to say that I never see a sadder face than the young doll is wearing right now. In fact I can see she has something serious on her mind on account of this sad face and also because she gets out just two words before she busts out crying in all directions.

  Now if there is one proposition I wish no part of it is a doll crying in my office, because someone is apt to come in and demand what it is I do to make her cry, especially if she is crying as loud as this doll, which is very loud indeed. So I commence saying many soothing things to the doll as follows: “There, there” and “Crying is not going to do any good” and this and that, and by and by with the help of these soothing words and a whole pack of Medical Wipes she stops crying and says to me like this:

  “My name is Sally Beamish,” she says, “and I come to you because I hear you are the gentleman who runs the research year. I wish very, very much to do this year,” she says, “but my Papa does not care for the idea whatever. In fact he says he will cut off my allowance if I try to register for it and then I will not be able to finish the Medical course.”

  At this she lets out something between a sniffle and a sob and commences again to bust all crying records, so that it takes another box of Medical Wipes and a lot more soothing words before I can calm her down enough to listen.

  “Why,” I say, “this is indeed a bad break because I remember how good your
grades turn out. However you must not be down-hearted. Maybe I can convince your old man that a research year is not such a bad proposition at that. I will write and ask him if he will not come and talk things over.”

  I say all this very breezy and confident, although I am by no means sure that her Papa will come to see me, or that he will listen to me if he does. However it has the right effect because the doll brightens up no little and takes the wind.

  Well the time comes to interview students for the research year and Sally makes a big impression on one and all. In fact everyone says it would be a crime and a shame if such a bright little doll could not do the course, although it is not they who have a meeting coming off with her Papa the next day.

  Papa Beamish turns out to be a guy in his fifties. He is not tall but he weighs in at about two hundred pounds and he has a lot of white hair and a black toothbrush moustache. He also has quite a large nose which has little red streaks in it, and I find I am so interested in this beezer that I forget how nervous I am. However Papa is very business-like and gets down to cases at once and it is immediately clear that he is by no means a beginner when it comes to dealing with people. In fact with Papa looking at me very hard and the doll looking all set to bust both my eardrums with crying any minute I am commencing to think that this is not a healthy place to be and I am wondering if I can take it on the lam when Papa starts to say his piece.

  “I am a self-made man,” he says, “not a professional student,” and I wish to say I am feeling like a professional student myself at this moment. “I start with nothing,” he says, “and now I have three factories and employ four hundred people. I do not mind telling you that I do not hold with all this expensive education for women,” he says. All the time he is saying this he is looking at me very fierce indeed but now his expression softens somewhat and he says to me like this: “But my dear wife, before she dies, makes me promise I will send our daughter through Medica1 School. I respect my wife very much and I keep my promise,” and now he gets very fierce again, “but I do not promise anything about research years and extra qualifications,” he says. “If all this is so important how come you do not do it for all the medical students?”