home.'
'Yes, I know.' I put my change into the tin.
The girl smiled. 'People with kidney trouble would do almost anything for one of those machines,' she said.
'I'm beginning to believe you're right,' I said.
Chapter Fourteen
Attacker. For the purposes of the assessment the 'phasing' player, who brings his unit into range, is allied the attacker. The player against whom the unit is brought is called the defender.
THE LONELIEST place in the world is the entrance hall of a big hospital. The huge and elaborate Victorian palace in which Marjorie worked was a maze of cast-iron staircases, stone arches and decorated paving. From these pitiless materials, whispers echoed back like the endless thrash, of a furious sea. The staff were inured to it. They clattered past in white coats, smelling of ether and hauling trolleys which I did not dare examine. By the time Marjorie arrived I needed medical reassurance.
'Then you should wait outside in the car.'
'I haven't brought the car.'
'In my car.' She was wearing a pink jersey shirt-dress instead of one of the dark suits she usually wore when on duty. She tied a black silk scarf and put on her belted raincoat. I said, 'I haven't got the key of your car.'
'Wait near my car.'
'You didn't bring it today remember?'
'The real answer,' said Marjorie, 'is that you like the frisson of hypochondria.' We stepped through the portal. The sun was high in a clear blue sky. It was hard to believe it was almost Christmas.
She was always like this when she was on duty: trimmer, younger, more independent. More like a doctor, in fact. It was difficult to escape the thought that the scatterbrained little girl that she became when with me was not the person she wanted to be. And yet we were happy together, and just waiting for her I rediscovered all the excitements and anxieties of adolescent love. We took one of the taxi cabs from the hospital cab rani;. I gave him the address of The Terrine du Chef.
'I bought you a present.'
'Oh, Pat. You remembered.'
She unwrapped it hastily. It was a wristwatch. 'It must have cost a fortune.'
'They'll exchange it for a desk barometer.'
She held the watch tight, and put her closed fist inside her other hand, and pressed it to her heart, as though frightened that I might take it from her. 'You said repapering the sitting-room would be for my birthday.'
'We'll probably be able to afford that as well,' I said. 'And I thought… well, if you do go to Los Angeles, you wouldn't be able to take the wallpaper.'
'And it's got a sweep second-hand.' Tears welled up in her eyes.
'It's only steel,' I said. 'Gold isn't so waterproof or dustproof… but if you want gold…'
There was a lot of the little girl in her. And there was no denying that that was what attracted me. I leaned forward to kiss the tip of her nose.
'Los Angeles…' she said. She sniffed, and smiled. 'It would mean working in a research lab… like a factory, almost… I like being part of a hospital… it's what makes it worth while.'
The cab swerved and threw her gently into my arms. 'I do love you, Patrick,' she said.
'You don't have to cry,' I told her. Her hair came undipped and fell across her face as I tried to kiss her again.
'We just don't get on together,' she said. She held me tight enough to disprove it.
She drew back from me and looked at my face as if seeing it for the first time. She put out a hand and touched my cheek with the tips of her fingers. 'Before we try again, let's find somewhere else to live.' She put her hand lightly across my lips. 'There's nothing wrong with your flat, but it is your flat, Patrick. I feel I'm only a lodger there, it makes me insecure.'
'I have another trip scheduled. While I'm away, you could speak with one of the less crooked house- agents.'
'Please! Do let us look. I don't mean in the suburbs or anything. I won't look at anything farther out than Highgate.'
'It's a deal.'
'And I'll try for a position in whatever hospital is local.'
'Good,' I said. As long as she worked in the same hospital as her husband there would always be this distance between us, even if — as she insisted — it was solely of my creation. I'd seen her with her husband. It was bloody disconcerting when they got on to the topic of medicine: it was as if they had their own culture, and their own language in which to discuss its finer nuances.
For a few minutes neither of us spoke. As we passed Lords Cricket Ground I saw a newspaper seller with a placard: RUSSIAN MYSTERY WOMAN CHAIRS GERMAN UNITY TALKS. That's the way it is with newspapers. The car strike had already become ANGRY CAR pickets: violence flares after some name-calling outside the factory that morning.
'Have you got a game in progress?' It was Marjorie's attempt to account for my moodiness.
'I left just as Ferdy was deciding whether to atomize a sub outside Murmansk and risk contaminating the shipping and ship yards in the fjord. Or whether to wait until its multiple clusters leave him without nukes for retaliation — or with the random target selection of the surviving silos.'
'And you ask me how I can work in the Pathology Lab.'
'It's comparable in a way… disease and war. Perhaps it's better to pick them to the bone and see what they are made of than to sit around and wait for the worst to happen.'
The cab stopped outside The Terrine. 'I must be back by two thirty at the latest.'
'We don't have to eat here,' I said. 'We can have a beer and a sandwich and get you back ten minutes early.'
'I'm sorry. I didn't mean that,' she said. 'It was a lovely idea.'
I paid the taxi off. Marjorie said. 'How did you find this little place — it's sweet.'
I was cupping my hands and peering close to the window. There were no lights on and no customers, just the neatly arranged place settings, polished glasses and starched napkins. I tried the door and rang the bell. Marjorie tried the door too. She laughed. 'That's typical of you, darling,' she said.
'Just cool it for a minute,' I told her. I went down the narrow alley at the side of the restaurant. It gave access to back entrances of houses above The Terrine. There was a wooden gate in the wall. I put my arm over the top of it, and by balancing a toe on a ledge in the wall I reached far enough to release the catch. Marjorie followed me through the gate. There was a tiny cobbled yard, with an outside toilet and a drain blocked with potato peelings.
'You shouldn't.'
I tried to lever the spring bolt open with the edge of my security card but it must have been one of those double torn movements with a dead-bolt. 'That's women,' I said. 'Give them presents and they complain they're not getting enough kindness.' I gave her another tiny kiss on the nose.
The lock wouldn't give. I leaned my back against the glass panel in the door to deaden the sound, then I pressed against it until I heard the glass snap.
