in ten minutes and she'll give me a ride.'
She was ready to leave and came and sat by him on the edge of the bed. She smiled ruefully and patted his knee. He was already feeling some rising regret that she was going. Was it self-love, this appetite for such a voluminous woman? His life had been a steadily mounting curve, Maisie to Darlene.
She said, 'Listen to me. A list of things you ought to know. One is, you're not an entirely good person, nor am I. Two, I love you. Three, I always assumed you were married. You didn't talk about it, I didn't ask. We're consenting adults. Four, when I spoke to Melissa I found out there was no Mrs Beard. Five, there have been times when you made love to me you said you wanted to marry me. Six, so I've decided. We're getting married. You'll kick and scream, but my mind's made up. I'll wear you down. No escape, Mister Nobel Lauree-ate. The stagecoach is pulling out and I do believe you're on it!'
She was so merry, so hopelessly optimistic and well disposed. So American. He started to laugh, and then so did she. They kissed, then kissed deeply.
He said, 'You're magnificent, and I'm not marrying you. Or anyone.'
She stood and took her bag. 'Well, I'm marrying you.'
'Stay a little longer. I'll drive you home.'
'Uhuh. I just got dressed. You'll make me late. I know you.'
She blew him a kiss from the door and was gone.
He remained in the chair wondering whether to phone Hammer and find out how the meeting with the lawyer went. The conversation would be easier from his own point of view, he decided, if he took a shower first. He thought he might watch the local TV news to see if the project was getting full coverage, but the remote was under a pillow, under one of many, on the far side of the bed, and he did not feel like stirring, not just yet. He was so lethargic that it crossed his mind that it would be a fine thing to move, or be gently moved on a hospital gurney to another room where the bed was made and his clothes were not sliding off the chair and the contents of his suitcase were not advancing across the floor. Not possible. He belonged here, in this world. So he would take a shower, now. But he did not get up. He thought about Melissa and Catriona approaching him along the Interstate, driving into the sunset, and how wise he had been, not telling Darlene of their arrival. She would want them all to have dinner together and discuss the future. He wondered where Tarpin was staying, and then he reminded himself he should be feeling excited about tomorrow, which made him think again about Hammer. And so his mind turned soporifically through the complications of the evening, so that when it came, the explosive knock or kick against his door, his startled surprise took the form of an involuntary leap from the chair and a jolt of pain through his chest. Then it came again, two powerful blows resounding against the hollow plywood.
'All right,' he shouted. 'I'm coming.'
Pulling open the door sucked the dry asphalt warmth of the evening into the motel room and revealed Hammer against an orange sky, and behind him a large figure in a suit.
'I'm not even asking,' Hammer said flatly. 'We're coming in.'
Beard shrugged as he stood back. Why then should he apologise for the state of the place?
Hammer looked pale, his face was rigid. He said in the same unmodulated voice, 'Mr Barnard, Mr Beard.' It was usually 'Professor'.
Beard shook the man's hand and gestured towards the chaotic bed, the only place to sit, and he returned to his chair. Barnard, who carried a document case, brushed the sheet with a fastidious flick of his hand, reasonably concerned about bodily fluids getting on his grey silk suit. Hammer sat beside him, and the three were hunched close together, like children plotting in a bedroom on a rainy afternoon.
Barnard, big, square-jawed, thin-lipped, with heavy-framed glasses, six three at least, and bursting out of his shirt, gave an initial impression, by the way he perched his case on his knees and kept his ankles together, of a meek-mannered fellow in a tough guy's body, more of a Clark Kent type, and apologetic about it. Toby at his side looked to be in a state of shock. There was a novel tremor in his right hand, and he kept swallowing hard, sending his Adam's apple up with an audible click. This should have been the kind of occasion when he sought out Beard's gaze for a conspiratorial or satirical exchange. Lawyers! But he would not meet his colleague's eye. Instead, he stared at his clasped hands as he said, 'Michael, this is bad.'
In the silence Barnard nodded sympathetically and waited, and then said in a voice pitched a little too high for his form, 'Shall I begin? Mr Beard, as you know, my firm is instructed from England in the matter of various patents granted to you. I'm going to spare you the legal language. Our intention is to settle this reasonably and swiftly. Our immediate wish is for you to cancel tomorrow's public event because it is prejudicial to our client's case.'
Beard's mind's eye, like a studio camera on a wire, was moving smoothly through the Dorset Square flat looking for the pile in which his old employment contracts were concealed. He said through a pleasant smile, 'And what case is that?'
'Sweet Jesus,' Hammer said softly.
'In the year 2000 my client personally made a copy of a three hundred and twenty-seven page document which we know to be in your possession. These were notes written by Mr Thomas Aldous before his death and while he was employed at the Centre for Renewable Energy, near Reading, England. This copy has been examined by reputable experts, top physicists in their field, including Professor Pollard of Newcastle University, and they have also examined your various patent applications. From their conclusions, parts of which have been seen by Mr Hammer here, we have every reason to believe that those applications were based not on original work by you, but on the work of Mr Aldous. Theft of intellectual property on such a scale is a serious matter, Mr Beard. The rightful owner of Mr Aldous's work is the Centre. These were the clear terms of his employment, which you can read for yourself.'
Beard maintained his engaged, kindly grin, but privately he registered this threat or setback in the form of an uncomfortable rippling of his pulse, like a syncopated drum roll, that did not simply distort his consciousness, but interrupted it, and for a second or two he might have passed out.
Then his heartbeat steadied, and he seemed to return to the room and adopted from nowhere a no-nonsense tone. 'Disrupting tomorrow's event would be highly prejudicial to our own interests and those of the locality and is clearly out of the question. It's virtually impossible anyway.' He leaned forward confidentially. 'Have you ever tried cancelling a US Air Force fly-past, Mr Barnard?'
No one smiled.
Beard continued. 'The second point is this. As I remember, the cover sheet of Tom Aldous's notes is marked confidential. For the exclusive attention of Professor Beard. I believe this confidentiality has been breached. Thirdly, before his death, Mr Aldous and I worked intensively on artificial photosynthesis. He used to come to my house, so often in fact that, as everybody knows, he ran off with my wife. When we were working together, I did the thinking and talking, Tom did the writing. In our democratic times, Mr Barnard, science remains a hierarchical affair, unamenable to levelling. Too much expertise, too much knowledge has to be acquired. Before they become old fools, senior scientists tend to know more, by objectively measured standards. Aldous was a lowly post-doc. You could say he was my amanuensis. And that was why the file was marked for me, and no one else. I have scores, if not hundreds, of pages of my own notes covering the same material, all properly annotated and dated, and certainly pre-dating the Aldous file. If you insist on wasting the Centre's resources coming to court, I'll make them available. But you will be paying my costs, and I shall take advice on whether to sue Mr Braby personally for defamation.'
Toby Hammer's slumped back had begun to straighten a little and there was hope, or the beginning of hope, in his eyes as he watched his friend.
The lawyer continued much as before. 'We have letters Aldous wrote to his father describing his ideas and his intention of putting them before you in this file. He wanted you to use your influence to get funding. We know from many sources that your interest at the time was confined to a new kind of wind turbine.'
'Mr Barnard,' Beard spoke in the falling tones of gentle, steely admonition. 'My life's work has been in light. Since the age of twenty, when I learned by heart the poem of that name by John Milton. Some twenty-five years ago, I received the Nobel Prize for modifying Einstein's photovoltaics. Do not try to tell me my interests are or were confined to wind turbines. As for Tom's letters, he would not be the first ambitious young man who made grand claims about his achievements to a father who was still supporting him.'
