Slow Burner Read online

  It was a principle with Nichol not to allow Sir Jeremy to annoy him. But he felt entitled to return a blow. ‘I have,’ he said. ‘They didn’t seem to be committee matters.’

  Russell suppressed a smile. This could develop memorably. But Sir Jeremy’s expression did not change. ‘Then perhaps you could tell us what we should do.’

  ‘I will do what I can. Unless you feel that there is something to be gained by the Ministry acting directly, I suggest that it be left to the Centres. We shall explain that there has been a technical breakdown. Of course it’s unfortunate that there has been a technical breakdown at all three, but it seems to be something to do with the raw materials which we use in common. The Commission can meet and issue some explanation in semi-scientific abracadabra. That is what it does excellently. The Press Offices can look after an immediate statement.’

  ‘We could live with that,’ Russell said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Sir Jeremy. ‘I hope so. Let me admit that I can think of nothing better. But there is still one point which will not have escaped you. We cannot afford the lost production.’ He looked at William Nichol with an expression which in anyone other than a very senior Civil Servant would have been an expression of triumph.

  Nichol returned his inspection coolly. ‘True,’ he said levelly. ‘I am afraid there is that. But as far as it is possible to minimize it we have done so. It is admitted that there isn’t at this moment, or very shortly won’t be, a milligramme of active Slow Burner in the country. But tomorrow is Saturday. A few places still do a half-day’s work, but most do not, and Sunday is a dies non. That will be something like half a day lost for everybody today and half a day again tomorrow for perhaps one in six. The Burner takes about forty hours to process from scratch, and my people have agreed to work over the weekend. Therefore if we start again at, say, three this afternoon, fresh Slow Burner should be coming forward early on Sunday. Add a day for delivery and for the factories to start up again. If that is anything like right, it means that by some time on Monday, or by Tuesday at worst, most of the factories should be working again. Just. With luck,’ Nichol smiled apologetically. ‘I’m afraid that was quite a recital,’ he said.

  ‘It was very clear indeed,’ Sir Jeremy said drily. The red telephone upon his desk rang sharply. He listened without comment. ‘Yes,’ he said finally, ‘I am afraid you are perfectly right. What has happened has been quite exceptional and I am very sorry. We are meeting about it now. May I telephone to you in an hour?’ He replaced the receiver. ‘That was Wasserman of Amalgamated Steel,’ he explained. ‘The office must have had a dozen calls of the same kind. On the basis of what you suggest I think we can refer them to Colton, but we had better agree at once the terms of the statement which your people will be putting out.’

  ‘In any terms you approve. The Press Office at Colton is on notice of what will be required of it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Sir Jeremy said. ‘You have thought of everything.’ He reflected again. ‘I think you said there had been some unprecedented trouble over your raw materials; that will perhaps ride the first storm, but you have been using them for some years, you know. It will hardly silence criticism.’

  ‘I’m afraid nothing will entirely do that. My suggestion was that the Commission should meet at once and do what it can with the whitewash.’

  ‘You consider they can?’

  ‘Without a doubt.’

  ‘And you think they will?’

  Nichol seemed surprised by the question. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Very well.’ Sir Jeremy paused. ‘You have not, if I may say so, left me very much choice.’ He pressed the bell on his desk. ‘Ask the Press Office,’ he told his secretary, ‘to telephone immediately to the Press Office at Colton. The Office at Colton will tell them what it is about. They are to use the security telephone. And ask them, please, to report to me directly as soon as their business has been arranged.’ He turned again to Nichol and to Russell. ‘Perhaps we have done what we can with the immediate problem,’ he said coldly, ‘but we have still to consider what should be done about Dipley.’

  Russell rose from his chair with decision. He was hungry; he felt that he had earned a glass of sherry. ‘I would like to make a suggestion, if I may, sir,’ he said. ‘In effect it is that we have nothing to consider. The evidence suggests that something very odd to do with the Slow Burner is happening at Dipley, and if Nichol receives the message he is expecting, we shall be certain of it. But we don’t know anything about Dipley. What is happening there isn’t deducible from the facts we have. We need a great many more, and with your permission I should be grateful for the opportunity to go after them.’

  Sir Jeremy was conscious that he was being rushed. Decisions were being made—oh, with impeccable deference—but made in effect without him. ‘What do you propose?’ he asked. He did not leave his chair.

  ‘Nothing very much—certainly nothing sensational. It will be delicate, obviously. I had thought that you might find it embarrassing to know too much about the details.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ Sir Jeremy sat on. ‘When do you expect to be able to report?’

  ‘The moment there is anything to bite on.’

  But Nichol too was on his feet. ‘I’m at your service,’ he said, ‘naturally.’ His manner was very polite. ‘This is a bad business,’ he added. ‘May I thank you for your understanding?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Then I will be getting back to Colton. I have asked your driver to wait for me—you don’t mind, I hope?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Then au revoir. And thank you again.’

  ‘Good-bye,’ Sir Jeremy said.

  Sir Jeremy went with them to the door of his office, then walked unsteadily to his desk. Normally he moved quickly, even spryly for a man of his age, but now he put his hands upon the arms of his chair and lowered himself with care. He fought to steady his breathing. His noble face was twisted. He was seriously concerned that he was going to suffer a stroke.

  Nichol, he thought—how dared he! How dared he take such a decision without consultation. It had been necessary to concede that the right decision had been taken, but that was not the point. He should have been consulted! It was intolerable. It was an affront. It was true that he had been treated with respect and at moments with deference, but it had been the wrong sort of respect, it had been the formal deference shown to the Ambassador of some third rate Caribbean republic. You offered him the courtesies because he could sometimes make things inconvenient if you did not, but basically his opinions were of no consequence and you knew it. Sir Jeremy ground his teeth. Russell too, he thought—that soldier turned superior policeman. Declining to discuss a hypothetical case; marching away to his lunch as though he were an equal. He wanted more facts, did he? By God, he had better find them. Sir Jeremy’s hands clenched. His heart pounded.

  This would not do, he told himself—this would not do at all. A lifetime’s habit of self-discipline reasserted itself. Slowly at first but with increasing authority he mastered his anger. He took from his pocket his keys, noticing with distaste that his hands were unsteady. With a key in his fingers he walked to a cabinet and unlocked a drawer. His colleagues would have been astonished at what he took from it. It was a bottle of whisky—unopened but undeniably a bottle of whisky. Sir Jeremy had a moment’s difficulty with the cap. He poured four fingers into the glass on his desk. For a second he hesitated, then drank in evenly spaced mouthfuls.

  He spoke on the telephone to the outer office. ‘Please see that I am on no account disturbed,’ he said. ‘On no account. For an hour.’

  He moved to his arm-chair. His pulse was steadier now. He sighed profoundly.

  Quite soon he was asleep.

  Nichol and Colonel Russell came together from the Permanent Secretary’s Room and walked along the carefully quietened corridor. ‘I’m going to walk down, if you don’t mind,’ Nichol said. ‘I can manage Bates’ lifts coming up. Going down they’re alt
ogether too transatlantic.’ They turned into a surprisingly shabby stairway. ‘You know, William,’ Russell suggested, ‘you’ve missed your vocation. As a physicist you are wasted. You would have made an excellent field commander.’

  ‘I doubt it. But if that’s what you think, I’d be obliged if you didn’t mention it to Bates.’ Nichol reflected a moment. ‘No,’ he corrected himself, ‘that’s altogether too obvious. If you could manage the right inflection he would assume that you were criticizing me. Rather severely. But seriously Charles, it mightn’t be a bad idea if you avoided the impression that we were rather old friends.’

  ‘Quite,’ Russell said briefly. ‘Precisely.’ They came again into the main hall of the Ministry as an official emerged from a lift. He approached them quickly. ‘I’m so glad to have caught you, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘There has been a message from Colton for Doctor Nichol.’ He handed Nichol an envelope.

  Nichol glanced at Russell. ‘You don’t mind?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course not.’

  Nichol opened the envelope and read the message. He folded the paper carefully and put it in his pocket. ‘That was the answer,’ he said. ‘The expected answer. There isn’t an epsilon ray upon the bearing of any authorized factory. The stuff is dead—stiff. But it is alive at Dipley.’

  Russell hesitated. ‘From which you deduce . . .?’ he inquired at length.

  ‘Nothing whatever. I said as much to Bates.’

  Russell permitted himself the smile of an old friend. ‘I had the impression . . .’he began.

  ‘That I wasn’t telling the truth? You were wrong, though I must confess only partly. I told the truth all right, but not the whole of it. I saw no occasion to mention that these rays from Dipley were intermittent—on and off, you know. It would have fogged my already tedious explanations and further puzzled Bates. Who was already sufficiently puzzled.’

  ‘It puzzles me.’

  ‘You are by no means alone. Why should anybody want to send out intermittent epsilon rays—assuming, that is, what is still unexplained, that he could emit them at all? You would need an elaborate apparatus, and in any case the amount of insulation needed before you could blanket epsilon to a point which our instruments couldn’t detect would be enormous. And all in a suburban semi-detached. And why?’

  ‘I haven’t an idea.’

  It was Nichol’s turn to smile. ‘But no doubt you intend to discover?’ he suggested.

  ‘You heard what I said to Bates.’

  ‘Of course. And he would have liked to ask questions. You were a trifle abrupt, Charles. He didn’t like it. And I should like to ask questions, too. But I’m not going to.’

  Thank you.’

  ‘But you’ll keep us au fait with developments, of course?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The two men stood for a moment in the doorway considering their respective problems. ‘Come and share my luncheon,’ Nichol invited.

  ‘I wish I could, but there’s altogether too much to be done.’

  Then come for the week-end and tell us about it.’

  ‘You mean it? I should like to. May I bring Mortimer?’ Mortimer was Russell’s chief assistant.

  ‘But naturally. When may I expect you?’

  ‘May we telephone? I’m afraid it may not be before Sunday.’

  ‘On Sunday then,’ Nichol agreed. He watched Charles Russell’s spare figure cross Whitehall. A policeman saluted. Russell, in acknowledgement, did not touch his hat; he took it off and put it on again. In his army days his regiment had been particular about that. Nichol looked at his watch. He found that he was not particularly hungry and turned to the top-hatted doorkeeper. ‘I think Sir Jeremy’s driver is waiting,’ he said. ‘Would you send somebody to tell her I’m ready?’

  ‘I’ll go myself, sir.’

  It had never occurred to William Nichol that subordinates gave him exceptional sendee, but neither had it occurred to him that he treated them with any special consideration. He would have denied it if it had been suggested. He would have explanied that you did not tell a cockadea doorkeeper, a doorkeeper with a waxed moustache and two rows of medals, directly to call a motor-car. He wasn’t conscious of thinking that this was almost certainly a pensioned sergeant, perhaps a warrant officer. Nevertheles, it was instinctive to suggest that an order would be passed on; instinctive to assume a certain hierarchy.

  The discreetly impressive car pulled up before the deplorable portico. The driver climbed down to open the door. Nichol noticed that the cigar ash had been swept away. He threw his overcoat on to the seat; he took the door from the driver and shut it. ‘May I travel in the front?’ he asked her. ‘I promise not to chatter till we’re out of the traffic, and not even then if it distracts you.’ He opened her own door and stood waiting. The driver hesitated; she glanced towards the doorkeeper, but the doorkeeper was walking to the other side of the car. ‘Thank you,’ she said finally as she got in. Nichol walked around the car, smiling an acknowledgement to the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper saluted and they moved away.

  Some people, the driver was thinking, could do that sort of thing, and some could not. Ellis Parton, for instance, her husband. could not.

  William Nichol kept his promise of silence as the car picked its way out of the London traffic. The driver was skilful, driving fast but smoothly, taking no risks but missing no openings. Nichol considered her, He saw that she wore a wedding ring, but somehow’ she did not give the impression of domesticity. The interminable suburbs dropped behind them and the outer industrial belt. Groups of men stood undecidedly outside the factories. A Friday afternoon without work, unexpected, uncalculated, had found them without resource. The groups drifted together; parted again; finally dissolved slowly. Presently London was behind them. ‘Is it all right if I talk now?’ Nichol asked.

  ‘Of course. But I’m not allowed to talk to passengers, you know—still less are you supposed to be sitting up here.’ The driver smiled. Nichol noticed that she had excellent teeth.

  ‘I’m not going to get you into trouble?’ he inquired.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I expect it will be reported, though—nearly everything is nowadays. But the doorman heard you’—she hesitated—‘heard you propose yourself. And you’re much too much the Important Person for it to be my place to read you the rules.’

  ‘Important Person sounds terrible,’ Nichol said. ‘I don’t think,’ he added without affectation, ‘I really don’t think I’m an Important Person.’

  ‘You have much better manners.’

  They smiled together, recognizing a value in common sharing perhaps a criticism implied. William Nichol discovered that he was hungry after all. ‘Have you had luncheon?’ he asked.

  The driver laughed. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I had some lunch. Luncheon is for you and lunch is for me.’ She spoke without rancour. ‘I can’t say I’ve had any luncheon, but I have had a snack in the canteen. You remember you told me to get something.’

  ‘So I did. As it turns out, it was a mistake.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  Nichol considered his reply. ‘You were discussing luncheon,’ he said. ‘It is not a meal to eat alone.’ He smiled disarmingly. ‘Evidently you have a feeling for words. You wouldn’t condemn me to eat luncheon alone. Won’t you at least have some coffee while I eat?’

  ‘It’s terribly against the regulations.’

  ‘I think my umbrella would stretch to it. We are agreed that I’m not an important person, but I think, yes I think it could be held to cover a cup of coffee. Just about.’

  The driver regarded him seriously. ‘Is that an undertaking?’ she asked. ‘I have a living to earn, you know.’

  ‘It is understood. There is a good inn in the next village.’ The driver drank her coffee whilst William Nichol ate quickly. He had eaten at this inn before. The menu was in English and the food simple and good. He finished his beer and ordered coffee for himself and two glasses of brandy. The driver accepted with thanks but withou
t comment. They were perfectly at ease.

  ‘You must see a lot of Sir Jeremy,’ Nichol suggested.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Do you like him?’

  The driver smiled. ‘Even for a Not Important Person’—her voice conveyed the ironic capitals—‘even for a Not Important Person you’re very indiscreet.’

  ‘Agreed. But do you like him?’

  The driver considered William Nichol with care. ‘Why do you ask?’ she inquired.

  ‘Because I have had a trying morning with him. Because if I hadn’t determined to the contrary I should waste virtue by disliking him. Because you are a woman.’

  ‘I’m not allowed to have opinions about Permanent Secretaries, and in any case I don’t believe you’re really interested in what I think about Sir Jeremy. But I’ll answer what I think you really mean to ask me. He loathes you. I’ve only seen you together twice, but he detests you. He could kill you.’

  ‘Oh come. But why?’

  The driver shrugged. ‘Can you imagine Sir Jeremy lunching with a driver in a public house?’

  ‘I must confess I cannot.’

  ‘And if he were to, do you think he would particularly amuse the driver?’

  ‘No, perhaps not.’

  ‘And do you suppose he doesn’t know that you can do both quite naturally?’

  ‘Perhaps. But it seems a very inadequate reason to hate somebody.’

  The driver was silent a moment, finishing her brandy. ‘It isn’t inadequate at all,’ she said finally. ‘Not when you’d give your eyes to be able to do it yourself. Not when you daren’t acknowledge that you even want to.’

  They drove away in a comfortable silence. The driver was thinking that this personable male was notably unlike the eminent scientist of fiction. Eminent scientists, in fiction and in cartoons, were shockheaded; or bald and a little scruffy. Their necks rose rangily from collars too big for them. They peered through preposterous spectacles. But William Nichol’s head, greying a little, was carefully brushed. She had seen him wear spectacles to read a map, but not otherwise. His clothes were not new, but they were very good, and he wore them well. He was elegant in his casual manner; he smiled often; and he was very considerate. The driver was a woman, and she had caught herself wondering about William Nichol. He couldn’t be more than forty-five and he could pass for less. She knew that his wife was dead. She stole a glance at him. He had an excellent figure.