the only comfortable place in the Centre, and let his thoughts return to the object of his obsession, fixing, with a near-pleasant heaviness in his limbs, on certain details he had lately neglected. But first he had to heave himself out of his chair and cross the room to turn off the murmuring television, forever tuned to a news channel. Bush v Gore, absorbing the precious attention of the disenfranchised majority of the world’s population. He settled down again and took a grip on his plate.
Patrice was by far the most beautiful of all his wives, or rather, she was in her angular fair- haired way, so it seemed to him now, the only beautiful wife he had ever had. The other four had missed beauty by millimetres – a nose too thin, a mouth too wide, a minimally defective or recessive chin or forehead – and they had appealed, these lesser wives, only from a particular perspective, or by an effort of will or imagination, or through self-deceiving desire. Certain details then, concerning Patrice. For example, the narrowness of her buttocks. A single large hand could span them. The creamy tautness of her skin between protruding points of pelvic bone. The startling polymorphism that had formed her fine, straw-blonde pubic hair. Would he ever see any of these treasures again? And now, unsensual as it was, he had to consider the bruise beneath her eye. She would not talk to him, and he might never know the truth. He could deal only in probabilities. Suppose his plan had worked, that the woman in his room, whose footfalls he had drummed with his palms on the stairs, had not enraged but endeared and bound Patrice to him, made her anxious at what she thought she was about to lose, prompted her to tell Tarpin that the affair was over, that she was returning to her husband – and provoked his fury. In that case, her blackened cheekbone signalled that she was almost his, Beard’s, again. Too much wish- fulfilment in that. What then?
Mechanically, he conveyed biscuits from plate to mouth. Perhaps the entire entanglement was going to take an improbable course. Most things were improbable. There were bruised and broken women who could not stay away from their violent men. Organisers of women’s refuges often lamented this quirk of human nature. If she was addicted to her fate there would be more blows to the face. His beautiful Patrice. Unbearable. Unthinkable. What then? She could be sickened as much by Michael’s sympathy as by Rodney’s violence, and want to be shot of them both. Or, he could go into his bedroom one night and discover her already there, waiting for him, naked on the marital bed, on her back as of old, legs parted, and he was going towards her, murmuring her name, and now he too was naked. It was going to be easy, and when he reached her side he cupped her left… But he was no longer alone, and he did not have to look up to know whose shape was in the doorway.
Without pouring himself a coffee – he allowed himself no stimulants and thought Beard should do the same – Aldous sat down beside the Chief and, skipping preliminaries, said, ‘I seriously urge you to read the piece on thin-film solar in next week’s Nature.’
Some of the blood supply that should have been in Beard’s brain was still in his penis, though draining quickly, otherwise he might have had the presence of mind to tell Aldous to go away.
Instead, he said, ‘Braby’s looking for you.’
‘That’s what I heard. You’ve all seen my turbine drawing.’
‘He’s probably in his office now.’
In a show of professional exhaustion, Aldous removed his baseball cap, leaned back in the armchair and closed his eyes. ‘I should have destroyed it.’
‘It has some promise,’ Beard said, much against his will. He distrusted anyone off a baseball field in a baseball cap, whichever way round it was worn.
‘That’s the point. Actually, it’s revolutionary. Talk about smooth torque! Optimal angle of attack for any direction of wind flow. Turbulence problem solved! Don’t get me wrong, Professor Beard, it’s brilliant. But d’you know, if the Centre takes it up, that’ll be three wasted years of development, doing work that a commercial firm could be doing with a view to making money. And it’s not important enough, micro wind is not going to solve the problem, Professor. The wind doesn’t blow hard enough in most towns. We need a new energy source for the whole of civilisation. There really isn’t much time. We should be doing the basics on solar, before the Germans and Japanese run away with it, before the Americans wake up. I’ve got some ideas. Even with our crappy climate, there’s infrared. But why am I telling this to you, of all people? We need to take another look at photosynthesis, see what we can learn. I’ve got some great ideas there too. I’m putting together a file for you. And now I’ve just seen Mr Braby heading towards Design with my stupid drawing in his hand. Oh Christ!’
He clamped a hand over his closed eyes in another show – this time, of undeserved suffering stoically endured.
‘I’m a simple man, Professor Beard. I just want to do what’s right by the planet.’
‘I see,’ Beard said, suddenly unable to face the final biscuit as it appeared in his grasp. He put it back on the plate and with some effort pushed himself out of his chair. ‘I need to be getting back now. You’ll need to drive me to the station.’
‘No point,’ Aldous said, and was out of his chair and crossing the room in three strides to the TV set, where he changed stations and paused, waiting for one item to give way to another, then turned up the volume. It was as if he had conjured the story for his own purposes, driven an elderly couple to destitution and despair and persuaded them to throw themselves hand in hand in front of the London to Oxford train. The local news report showed nothing more gory than the lines of frustrated passengers at Reading station being turned away and others waiting for special coaches that had failed to turn up.
The young man was guiding Beard towards the door, as one might a mental patient in need of a bath. ‘I live not far from Belsize Park and I’m going home now. It’s not a Prius, but it’ll get you to your door.’
He did not know how Aldous knew where he lived, but there was no point asking. And because Beard now intended to go home, back to the headquarters of his misery, he had no interest in sending Aldous to see Jock Braby.
Within minutes the Chief was sitting in the front of a rusty Ford Escort, pretending to listen to an insider’s account of what he might expect to find in next year’s International Panel on Climate Change report. Now the driver’s line of gaze had to deviate a whole ninety degrees from the road to engage with his passenger, sometimes for seconds on end, during which time, by Beard’s calculation, they had travelled several hundred metres. You don’t have to look at me to talk to me, he wanted to say, as he watched the traffic ahead, trying to predict the moment when he might seize the wheel. But even Beard found it difficult to criticise a man who was giving him a lift, his host in effect. Rather die or spend a life as a morose quadriplegic than be impolite.
After outlining what he expected to read next year in the third IPCC report, Aldous told Beard – and was the fiftieth person to do so in the past twelve months – that the last ten years of the twentieth century had been the warmest ten, or was it nine, on record. Then he was musing on climate sensitivity, the temperature rise associated with a doubling of CO2 above pre-industrial levels. As they entered London proper, it was radiative forcing, and after that the familiar litany of shrinking glaciers, encroaching deserts, dissolving coral reefs, disrupted ocean currents, rising sea levels, disappearing this and that, on and on, while Beard sank into a gloom of inattention, not because the planet was in peril – that moronic word again – but because someone was telling him it was with such enthusiasm. This was what he disliked about political people – injustice and calamity animated them, it was their milk, their lifeblood, it pleasured them.
So climate change was consuming Tom Aldous. Did he have other subjects? Yes, he did. He was concerned about the emissions from his car and had found an engineer in Dagenham who was going to help him convert it to run on electricity. The drive train was good, the problem was the battery – he would need to recharge it every thirty miles. He would just about make it into work if he travelled no faster than eighteen mph. Finally, Beard forced Aldous into the human arena by asking him where he lived. In a studio flat at the bottom of his uncle’s garden in Hampstead. Each weekend he drove to Swaffham to visit his father, who was ill with a lung infection. The mother was long dead.
The story of the mother was about to begin as they pulled up outside the house. Beard was interrupting to speak his thanks, keen to bring the encounter to an end, but Aldous was out of the car and hurrying round to open the passenger’s door and help him out.
‘I can manage, I can manage,’ Beard said testily, but with the recent weight-gain, he almost could not, the wretched car was so low-slung. Aldous accompanied him up the path, again in psychiatric-nurse style, and when they were at the front door and Beard was reaching for his key, asked if he might use the lavatory. How to refuse? Just as they stepped into the house he remembered that it was Patrice’s afternoon off, and there she was, at the head of the stairs, in rakish blue eyepatch, tight jeans, pale green cashmere sweater,
