against his hips. She was his. Slow, so slow… Taking her as she had not been taken.
Slow, slow, till she'd scream. Oh, oh, fucking good… H e r head thrashing on the pillow, Debbie's pillow. Hearing her own voice.
Recognising Sara Bissett's voice. Little shouts, slight calls. She moaned. He came inside her, deep inside her. She cried out.
He rolled away. Bloody hell, and the light was still on, the door was still open, and she could hear the shouting and the laughter shimmer up the stairs, and the rattle of plates, and the thump of the music. Didn't care, didn't give a damn. She played patterns with her fingernail in the hair on his chest.
Her husband was downstairs with the voices and the food and the music, and she didn't give a damn.
They were still in the corner, left to themselves. To Colt, he was just a target. He felt no emotion towards the man, no pity and no contempt. The time was right. The timing was the gamble.
It was his alone to choose.
He said, 'There is another way.'
'I don't know it. God knows, I've looked elsewhere. Too high-powered, too specialised, that's the trap.'
'Go abroad.'
Bissett said, 'It's against the rules.'
' Y o u go abroad and you don't tell them you're going.'
'That's… '
'That's looking after yourself, Frederick. You go abroad where your work is accorded the respect it deserves, and where it is paid what it deserves.'
'What you mean… '
'I mean, where you are a top man, head of a department. I mean where you are paid a hundred grand a year, no tax.'
'I beg your pardon…'
'A team working for you, superb working and living conditions.'
'I really don't know… '
Colt said, ' D r Bissett, you can leave here tonight, you can go to your security people, you can report this conversation. I'll be in shit, and you'll be a hero and poor. On the other hand, you can agree to meet some people, you can discuss a work offer, a meeting without strings. Which, Dr Bissett?'
He recognised the wife. She came across to them. She said nothing. A beautiful woman. She looked as though she had had one too many.
Colt wrote a telephone number on a sheet of a notepad from his shirt pocket. He looked into Bissett's face, he saw the trust brimming in his eyes. He handed the paper to Bissett.
Bissett said, 'I think it's time we went home, Sara, don't you?'
12
He had had the same fierce throbbing ache – and the same sense of shame the morning after his 'stag night', just him and the junior physics lecturer who had agreed, after having his arm twisted, to be his best Man. And, once before, when he graduated. Breakfast this morning was absolutely out ol the question.
Sara had followed him round the house when they were back inside. 'Had he enjoyed himself? Just a little? It hadn't been too frightful, had it?'' He wasn't sure it hadn't, And she hadn't worn her nightdress when they went to bed and she had clung to his back, and all he had wanted was to keep the room from rocking.
He could hear the clatter of plates and mugs, and he could hear her shouting up the stairs for the boys t» hurry themselves.
As he shaved, and then as he dressed, there were the moments of truth remembered from last night. He asked himself what had got into him that he had accepted the telephone number of the young man who called himself Colt. What in Christ's name had he done that for? Why? Well, obviously he'd drunk too much.
No… not just because he had drunk too much, and he was committed to nothing, absolutely nothing. Of course he wasn't committed to anything, it was a conversation at a party… That was utter rubbish, and a Senior Scientific Officer at A.W.E. didn't have to have it spelled out to him.
He went downstairs. The boys were down already and in their school pullovers, and bubbling to their mother because Vicky had let them sit up and watch television till late. He loved those boys. Sara protested he must eat his toast, the boys hooted with laughter, and the pain of the noise drove him, almost at a run, out of the house.
The young man had been a very pleasant young man, and he'd talked good sense. No strings, no commitment, just a conversation.
The Ministry policeman on the gate, he'd know that bastard.
Same bastard. He produced his I/D card. The man said, 'Once more into the breach, Dr Bissett?' and all the way to his office Bissett hunted in his aching head for a stinging, annihilating riposte, but all the best lines seemed inadequate for use on the policeman.
Carol was handing the day's internal post to Basil. Basil had his bulging briefcase on the floor beside his feet as he flicked through the brown re-usable envelopes. Basil wouldn't be stopped by any bastard of a Ministry policeman when he cycled to H area from Boundary Hall. The Clerical Assistants were shrugging out of their coats, squeezing lipstick onto their faces, filling the coffee machine… and there was the young man. The young man sat close to Carol's desk and he had a raincoat over his knees, and an attache case that he held close against his chest. The young man seemed to be mesmerised by Basil.
'Morning, Dr Bissett,' Carol's singing greeting.
'Morning, Carol.'
The young man's head didn't jerk. There was nothing obvious in his reaction. The young man's head tilted upwards. A good-looking young man, Bissett thought, didn't look as though he was from the Establishment, might be down from London, the tie was London. Carol was handing him his own mail. He sensed that the young man watched him. He dropped three of his four envelopes into Carol's bin. He headed down the corridor, for his office.
He heard Carol say, ' T h e problem is, Mr Rutherford, that Mr Boll may not be coming straight in. His diary's locked in his room. If he's a meeting first thing then I don't know when he'll be here.'
He was at the door of his office, reaching for his keys.
A quiet, pleasant voice, ' I ' m not in a hurry. On the other hand, if that's coffee that I see being brewed… '
He could listen. If he listened and did not like what he heard then he could walk away. Frederick Bissett was his own master.
He could control what he had begun. Why should he not be able to control his destiny?
A little past eleven o'clock, he left his office. He felt quite calm. He locked the door behind him and he walked down the corridor. He paused by Carol's desk. He didn't have to speak to her. The young man was still sitting in the easy chair near to Carol's desk. The young man was watching him. He didn't have-to offer an explanation to Carol as to why he was leaving H3 in the middle of the morning.
'I'll be gone for a few minutes, Carol.'
The young man looked to Bissett like a civil servant, perhaps from the Property Services Agency, perhaps from the Directorate of Defence Services, another of the creatures who came down from London, knowing nothing, to pry into the efficiency of the Establishment. The young man was watching him.
He would only be a few minutes because that was all that it would take for him to drive across to the main canteen area where the public telephones were.
The telephone shrilled below him. The woman shouted at her baby to be quiet, and he heard her answer the telephone.
She came up the stairs to him. She knocked and opened the door. She seemed to him broken by the poverty, anxiety, of her life. She looked at him with a sort of longing. Not how Fran looked at him. It was as if she knew that he was free, and she was not free. She told him that there was a man on the phone for him. He went down the stairs fast.
