Here Be Monsters

If this was the field, thought Elizabeth, it was not at all how she had imagined it - going blindly into it. But then nothing in R & D had ever been as she imagined it, all these months. But then no doubt the little midshipman had never imagined himself on an Abyssinian mountainside, with his rockets.

She hadn't time to arrange herself comfortably before he lurched her sideways with another fierce U-turn, to get himself back en route - whatever the route might be.

'Can y'sit yerself one side or the other, Miss… so I can see?'

Elizabeth slid obediently into one corner of the cab. 'May I ask where we are going?'

'Yus - you may.' He twisted the cab up a narrow street behind the Xenophon tower, cutting ahead of a CD- registered Mercedes full of Arabs which had just pulled away from the oil company's entrance. 'Dont'cha know, then?'

'No. I do not know.'

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The taxi raced up the narrow street, then turned into an even narrower one, which looked like a cul-de- sac.

Elizabeth waited, unwilling to weaken his concentration while their lives were at stake.

Then, when there was only a blank wall ahead, he swung into what appeared to be a loading bay, turned narrowly past a line of vans, and came into daylight again, in another street.

'Where are we going?' Wherever they were going, it would cost the British tax-payer. 'Is it far?'

'No.' He jumped the lights at a crossing, ahead of a terrified old lady in a Metro. 'Nothin'

followin' us now -'e's backin' out of Napier Lane by now, fr all the good it'll do Mm. Silver MG Maestro, EUD 909Y?'

Paul drove a silver MG Maestro, of which he was inordinately proud; but she'd never thought to look at its number-plate. 'No.'

'No?' He cocked his head. 'Well, 'e was the one - an' not bad, neither, 'cause he remembered me when I went round the second time, past 'im, an' went like the clappers after us, into Pict Street… not that it did 'im any good, like I said - but we're comin' up now, Miss - '

Elizabeth looked around. They were back beside the river now - on the Embankment, somewhere - ?

*Only 'e was good - so just in case, it might be as well for you to get out quick-like - right?

An' that'll be two-fifteen, wiv any small token of your esteem, Miss, for my time an' trouble

- like, silver MG Maestro EUD 909Y?'

Elizabeth stared at the Abyssinian War memorial, just across the road from where they were drawing into the kerb, under the canopy of Xenophon Oil's entrance.

'Quick now, Miss!' He held out his hand. 'Say a tenner?'

'A tenner?' Just in time she remembered whose fare she was. 'I'll tell Dr Audley that.'

Up three - four - five marble steps - after the fifth, as she stepped on the huge Xenophon mat, the dark-green glass doors bearing the same oil-rich-gold colophon hissed open automatically, drawing her inside and then cutting off the sound of London behind her as they hissed shut again.

Too much information jostled momentarily in her brain, coming from too many directions.

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There was visual information all around - the overwhelming green-and-gold assault of the entrance hall of Xenophon's Aladdin's cave: not only the green-and-gold of marble and mosaic, but a jungle hothouse profusion of growing things which would have made Mrs Harlin's mouth water.

Then memory sorted out the driving theme of Xenophon's public relations, on television and in the colour supplements and across innumerable billboards: ' Xenophon grows' was a slogan carefully divorced from the growth of Xenophon's profits, and there were green leaves entwined round the Green X symbolizing the company's well-publicized concern for the environment of its operations - There is no acid rain in our rain forest! But where did Squadron Leader Thomas - Haddock Thomas - peep through those leaves?

And if EUD 909Y was Paul, why was Paul sticking his neck out beyond common sense -

'Elizabeth!' Audley brushed aside a trailing piece of jungle. 'Where on earth have you been?'

'David.' She stifled the temptation to say 'Dr Audley, I presume?' The field was already too much like a jungle for such flippancy.

'You're late.' Audley tugged at the sweaty striped knot of his rugby club tie. 'Come on!' He gestured towards the lift doors.

She stood her ground. David Audley was much younger than Father was - than Father would have been: it still required an effort to think of Father in the past tense -but he was quite old enough to be her father, nevertheless. But if she weakened now, she would be lost.

He abandoned the dreadful tie. 'Come on, Elizabeth - please!'

'You owe some taxi-driver two-pounds-and-fifteen-pence, plus tip. And he makes that ten pounds exactly.'

'What?' He blinked at her. 'Why didn't you pay him?'

'I thought ten pounds was too much for just crossing the road. Which was where I was. As you well know.' In spite of herself, she weakened. 'The Abyssinian War memorial, David -

remember?'